Inga and weeding

What inga seeds look like and how to prepare them for alley cropping

Foliage-as-mulch is Hands ✓. Hands 2021 §12: "the foliage is stripped from the branches and mulched onto the soil surface. […] The mulch will settle at about 100–150 mm in depth within a few days." Direct mulching matches.

Sources include Inga Foundation (academic literature, pers. communication, and acknowleged best training site. Rainforest Saver (Ecuador training network) with Jose Abel as the ground trainer.

Format

• Matrix nurse for hardwood reforestation
• Alley cropping for
• Pepper on Gliricidia stakes within Inga alleys (3m)
• Cacao under Inga (3:1, ~600/ha total)

Nursery operational detail

• Nursery operational detail (bag size, shade %, timing).
• Mortality rates and replant strategy

Species selection logic

There is regional variation in the preferred Inga species but this is not in the academic literature as far as we can determine, and by report only.

species matrix (altitude × climate × soil)

Cation supplementation rules

• Degraded soils benefit from dolomite + K-Mag (Hands 2021)

Operational and pruning calendar

n practice most sites plant more densely, then weed to achieve the desired spacing (see .

Diagnostic indicators (healthy vs failing stand)

Figure X. Savimbo team and scientific collaborators doing eDNA sampling in the Colombian Amazon.

CATIE — Turrialba, Costa Rica

The most directly Hands-adjacent institution. Hands' original Cambridge experimental sites (Sarapiquí, San Juan) were on Costa Rican soil and CATIE has run parallel agroforestry research for 50+ years. Their cacao-shade and coffee-shade Inga work is published and operational.

Institutional contact (gatekeeper):

• General: [e-mail]
• Tel: [phone]
• Address: Sede Central, Turrialba 30501, Costa Rica

Named researchers worth reaching:

• Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim — Leader, GAMMA Program (livestock-environment-agroforestry). [e-mail]. Long Hands-parallel career on silvopastoral systems and Inga as fodder/shade. Probably the senior person on agroforestry there.
• Dr. Elías de Melo Virginio Filho — Researcher, Coffee & Cocoa Genetic and Agroforestry Improvement Unit. Coordinates the Volcafe-CATIE partnership and the ECOM agroforestry training program for technicians. Direct email obfuscated on CATIE site; reachable via [e-mail] to his attention, or via ResearchGate. He's actively training technicians on agroforestry implementation right now — exactly your gap.
• Adriana Escobedo Aguilar — leads sustainable agribusiness team, oversees Master's in Sustainable Agribusiness Management. Reachable via ResearchGate. Useful if the SexyTrees protocol needs an academic anchor on the economics side.

IIAP — Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonía Peruana, Iquitos

The Peruvian Amazon institution most likely to have what you need on regional adaptation, since they sit in the heart of Inga edulis's native range and have been working on it operationally for decades — including the Sotelo-Montes & Weber farmer-priority work that named I. edulis as a top species for the region.

Institutional:

• Headquarters: Av. Abelardo Quiñones km 2.5, Iquitos, Perú
• Web/portal: iiap.gob.pe (their email contact form is the standard route)
• Allpahuayo Research Center (CIA-EBJAA): iiap.gob.pe/ebjaa — has demonstration plots including Inga and other Amazonian agroforestry species

Worth knowing: IIAP's most-cited Inga work was Sotelo-Montes and Weber (1997) on farmer species priorities in Yurimaguas, Pucallpa, and Iquitos. That paper alone gives you the region-by-region prioritization framework you're missing. John Weber (formerly ICRAF/IIAP, now retired but still publishes) and Carmen Sotelo-Montes would be the lineage to trace. Weber is reachable via ICRAF alumni networks.

Best opening move: Through CIFOR-ICRAF Peru rather than direct, because ICRAF has a formal partnership with IIAP and a Lima office. CIFOR-ICRAF Peru: cifor-icraf.org/locations/latin-america/peru/ — they'll route you cleanly to whichever IIAP staff are currently active on Inga.

os. That paper alone gives you the region-by-region prioritization framework you're missing. John Weber (formerly ICRAF/IIAP, now retired but still publishes) and Carmen Sotelo-Montes would be the lineage to trace. Weber is reachable via ICRAF alumni networks.