An Improved Gum Tapping from Acacia Senegal: an Option for Better Livelihood

Gum Arabic is the oldest and best known tree gum exudate obtained from certain Acacia trees, which occurs in a wide belt of arid & semi-arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa, North-Western India and Pakistan. However, the potential of this species is still untapped in most of the areas because of unproductive and interest less effort in gum tapping. Traditional method of gum tapping is laborious, causes more injuries to the tree and in turn, the tree produces a very low quantity of gum, sometimes negligible. It causes gum tappers to lose their interests in gum tapping. To solve the problem and to increase the gum production worldwide, an improved technique of gum tapping is described in this book which is more applicable in gum tapping from Acacia senegal, as all research aspects to prove the method was done on Acacia senegal. The improved method is not only simple, but also causes very less injuries to the tree and leads to a very large quantity of gum production as compared to traditional method. Adoption of the improved technique in judicious manner will open the door of livelihoods for many peoples of gum belt regions of world and change the scenario of gum production in the world