Income contribution and adoption potential of apple based agroforestry on homestead farms in West and North Shoa zones of Ethiopia

To reduce the local people high reliance on the remnant forest, the then Forestry Research Center and GTZ introduced and provided Apple tree seedlings for selected residents in the West and North Shoa Zones of Ethiopia two decades ago. However, despite the provision of such variety of seedlings, a study that assessed the contribution of the fruit trees to the household economy improvement, and the various determinant factors that limit the adoption of the technology was lacking. Therefore, this study was initiated to estimate and compare households’ income from apple based agroforestry system and identify factors that influence its adoption by smallholder farmers in both West and North Shoa Zones of Ethiopia. From three Woredas of the two zones, four potential Kebeles were purposefully chosen, and from which 600 households were randomly selected. The results showed that in both study areas, the aggregated adopter household mean annual gross income from vegetable + apple fruit was 24,337.22ETB ha-1yr-1 and mean annual gross income of non-adopters from vegetables was 7480.53ETB ha-1yr-1. The income obtained from apple contributes 16.84% to the income of agri-horticultural system. The agri-horticulture system contributed three-fold higher gross revenue for adopters in addition to its nutritional value. However, adoption of apple-based agroforestry systems was significantly influenced by formal educational levels (+), a Market problem (-), Disease and Pest to maximize the benefits from the system, interdisciplinary research needs to be conducted to reduce the problem of marketing and disease and pest. Key words: Agri-horticulture system, apple tree adoption, household income.