species diversity in home garden is affected greatly by the ecological factor. Though the
variation in the number of species in home gardens is observed among the different socio-
economic categories, the differences are statistically non-significant (p>0.05). Home gardens
are the major sources of family nutrition as they supply 60% of the total vegetable and fruit
demand of the family. Home gardens are mostly organic-based farming system, which
utilizes locally available resources for its management. Many species are either already
domesticated or are in the process of domestication in the home gardens. This indicates that
farmers perceive home gardens as an experimenting site for their own research and also
take them as the avenue for adopting/adapting new species/varieties.
Home gardens are never been treated as a production unit and contributors to the national
food security by the formal systems as the information related to home gardens have never
been the part of national agriculture census despite their importance. Information related to
home gardens is available in the publications of Central Bureau of Statistics. There is an
urgent need of formulating/reforming the policy considering home gardens as a unit of on-
farm management of highly diversified plant genetic resources and also considering home
gardens as an integral and important part of the farming systems, which contribute to the
food security of particularly the resource poor farmers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We are greatly indebted to the farmers of different project sites, who provided the
information to the study team. The professional team members Dr. Anil Subedi, Dr. Ram
Rana and Dr. Pratap Shrestha deserve our acknowledgement for their contribution and
suggestions during the development of the survey methodology. We are very grateful to Dr.
Bhuwon R. Sthapit IPGRI-APO, Regional Coordinator for the home garden project) for his
kind support and guidance in conducting this study. We also thank Mr. Bir Bahadur Tamang,
Mr. Balabhadra Poudel, Ms. Durga Gautam, Ms. Bhim K Rai and Ms. Kunta Shrestha for
providing field supports during the survey. Mr. S. Basnet deserves special thanks for his
outstanding contribution in arranging the field survey and also contributing in the data
management. We thank Mr. Parshu BK for his support in data analysis. We would like to
express our sincere thanks to Mr. Sanjaya Gyawali for reviewing this paper.
The study is a part of global home garden project, which is coordinated by Biodversity
International. The financial support for the Nepal home garden project is provided by SDC.
The authors are highly thankful to both of the organisations.
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