Evaluation of Traditional Plantation Management Techniques with Respect to Modern Concepts of Plantation Management

Abstract

The traditional Sri Lankans led a simple yet a sustainable life in harmony with the natureutilising its resources wisely and appropriately. Since the vitality of forest resources werewell known, properly designed plantation management techniques were followed by themeven in ancient times. The traditionally practiced plantation management techniques arehighly significant since most of these methods are more or less similar to the plantationmanagement practices which are used in modern plantations leading to a sustainablemanagement of forest resources. These traditional practices are evaluated on a scientific basisalong with the modern concepts of sustainable plantation management to signify the ecoconsciousness of traditional plantation management techniques. Different traditionalplantation management practices were gathered from literary sources such as ancientmanuscripts, palm leave books, publications etc. The gathered methods were verified throughoral interviews with experienced traditional experts and the verified methods werescientifically evaluated and were compared with the basic plantation management conceptspracticed under sustainable plantation management at present. The methods of assessing soilsuitability for various plantations, the specific requirements of floral species, ecofriendly landpreparation techniques (such as phytoremediation etc.), different seeding or plantationmethods (based upon the used floral species), the optimum spaces or gaps that should bemaintained between two trees (for different floral species), plant treatment methods,harvesting ages of different species are discussed in detail within the traditional sourceswhich seem to bear the same core concepts as of the modern techniques. Hence thetraditional plantation management techniques can be defined as the fundamentals ofsustainable forest resources management that have been gradually evolved into modernconcepts of plantation management.