Gum Arabic Research in Sudan During the Period 2000-2025 a Review Paper for Some of Research Activities During the Period 2000-2025

This paper is an attempt to review some of the research work that was carried out by the Gum Arabic Research Division (GRD) during the period 2000 to 2025. The objectives is to give a highlight about the research finding that provided by the Gum Arabic Research Division and to disseminate these finding to the gum producers, stakeholders such as companies, forest administrations, producers association and the other relevant research institutes. During the period 2000-2025 many research excrement’s were carried out by the gum arabic research scientist at El-Obeid, Kadugli and Nyala Research Stations. These experiments include tapping tools, date of tapping, tapping intensity, position of tapping (branch, lower stem, middle stem, and higher stem), tapping direction, the relationship between climatic factors, tapping and gum arabic yield, provenances trails and agroforestry trails. For tapping tools, the Sonki (new innovative tool developed by GRD) is found as a best tool for tapping <i>Acacia senegal</i> trees. It is reported that it has muti-function where it could be used for tapping the tree and harvesting the gum. The GRD was found that gum arabic yield was greatly influenced by tapping date, the gum yield (g/tree and g/picking) was higher when the trees were tapped on the 15<sup>th</sup> of October and 1<sup>st</sup> of November compared with other date of tapping. The GRD found that gum arabic yield prediction shortly before or after tapping is a achievable either by knowing the commencement of tapping or by knowing yield of the first picking. For the effect of tapping in various azimuth angles on gum arabic yield we found that gum yield of <i>Acacia senegal</i> increase by 67.6 and up to two folds as due to tapping in the Eastern and Western Sides of the branches towards direct sun light. 15 <i>Acacia senegal</i> provenances were examined in the nursery and under field conditions to identify which provenances that capable to grow and survive under a diverse environmental conditions at Eldamokey forest reserve. All <i>A. senegal</i> provenances gave a higher survival percentage of more than 90% under the dry climatic conditions at the experimental site. For agroforestry research it was found that intercropping of of <i>Acacia senegal</i> with groundnut, sesame and roselle provide a good household income from gum arabic production which can easily compensate for other crop yield losses. For tree spacing the finding from GRD indicated that crops yield and straw were affected by tree spacing thus recorded higher yield under wider spacing compared with the narrow ones. LER was higher under agroforestry system as compared to mono-cropping. The study concluded that gum arabic yield was greatly influenced by tapping date and tapping intensity. The gum yield of <i>Acacia senegal</i> increase due to tapping in the Eastern and Western Sides of the branches towards direct sun light. From and economical point of view, it is recommended that roselle and sesame can be intercropped with <i>A. senegal</i>.