Sistemas agroflorestais e o legado de João Ambrósio de Araújo Filho: Subsídios para a criação do instituto de pecuária apropriada no município de Gurjão-Paraíba

Abstract

For 50 years, the Agronomist from Ceará João Ambrósio de Araújo specialized in what made him best known: the manipulation and management of caatinga vegetation for especially pastoral purposes. There were more than 260 publications dealing with the theme or around it and especially the semi-arid environment, and dozens of areas manipulated with extremely favorable results of conservation and production. In this research, in addition to retrieving 148 of these publications, between 1982 and 2017, with emphasis on articles and abstracts, biographical data were retrieved from his birth in Bela Cruz, Ceará, in 1941 until his death in Fortaleza, Ceará, in 2015, in addition to records from the 19 cities and 06 states where he worked. With regard to the scientific collection, during his career, he studied, cited, 23 botanical families, 75 genera and 85 species, highlighting the families Poaceae and Fabaceae. Among the most cited native species, Hyptis suaveolens (L.) Poit., Mimosa tenuiflora (Mart.) Benth., Mimosa caesalpiniifolia Benth. and Croton blanchetianus Baill. For exotic species, the largest citations were Cenchrus ciliaris L., Brachiaria plantaginea (Link) Hitch. and Leucaena leucocephala (Lam.) R. de Wit. The systematization of the keywords revealed 428 citations distributed in 175 themes, with emphasis on Caatinga, Sheep, Semiarid, Raleada Caatinga, Agrossilvipastoral System and Agroforestry Systems, reinforcing what turned out to be practically a passion exacerbated by the Caatinga/Semi-arid and agroforestry systems. However, every legacy runs the risk of being forgotten or lost over time. Thus, at the initiative of the administrative management of the municipality of Gurjão, Semiárido Paraibano, an area of 25.97 ha of caatinga vegetation was acquired in order to transform it into a reference center for handling caatinga and to be called Instituto de Pecuária. Alternative João Ambrósio de Araújo Filho. In this area, all the knowledge and teachings accumulated in several publications will be practiced in order to demonstrate a more harmonious coexistence between people, plants and animals in a semi-arid environment, susceptible to desertification, but with a predominantly pastoral aptitude.