Agrobiodiversity management in traditional high mountain orchard: Totoro indigenous reservation, Cauca - Colombia

Abstract The present work has the objective of documenting the diversity of species and crops and how these are managed and interchanged among different ecological floors through the traditional orchard in the context of the indigenous community of Totoro based on the conceptual-methodological elements of ethnobiology, as the scientific framework that studies the relations plants-humans and the different ways of handling plant resources in traditional agricultural systems (HERNANDEZ X., 1985) and the analysis of social media (JANSSEN et al., 2006). For this purpose, a design of qualitative analysis methods with ethnographic and ethnobotanical tools is performed. Following results stand out the description of the handling and complementary interchange among ecological floors of 68 plant species in traditional orchards; which allowed to identify which traditional orchards are key for the articulation of the networks for the interchange of knowledge, practices and vegetal material through the principles of reciprocity, redistribution and family relationships.