Allan Thomas, Usha C. Thomas and Modem Ravi Kishore
Abstract
This Expost facto and explorative study was conducted in the 20 selected home gardens in Thiruvananthapuram district in Kerala, India covering the coastal mid land, midland and high lying areas to assess the quantitative structure and crop composition of tropical home gardens. Biodiversity was quantified using Shannon wieners index (H) for the three regions viz., courtyard, midregion and outer regions within each homegardens. Altogether 20 homegardens were analyzed and the Shannon-Weiner Diversity index (Di), varies from 2.869-4.704 with the average Shannon Di value of 3.958 indicating a strong biodiversity making homegarden farming system sustainable fulfilling the different pillars of socio-economic and environmental stability. Highest diversiy index was observed in the mid region and was found to be on par with courtyard. Least value was recorded in the outer region revealing that irrespective of the size of holdings the gardens tends to preserve the maximum taxonomically distinct variance within the different regions in home gardens.