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Abstract Enhancing our understanding of carbon (C) stock in diverse horticulture and fruit-based agroforestry systems has potential to provide farmers with supplementary advantages in terms of poverty alleviation and livelihood development which can significantly benefit C market initiatives like UN-REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation). Therefore, the current study aimed to assess the biomass accumulation, C storage and economic efficacy of seven agro-ecosystems, namely guava-based agri-horticulture system (AHS), mango-AHS, guava- pure orchard (PO), mango-PO, Indian gooseberry -PO, teak boundary plantation (TBP) and annual cropping system (ACS) under two different landscape positions viz. , upland and lowland in the semi-arid region of Vindhyan ranges. The result indicated that mango-AHS accumulated significantly (p < 0. 05) higher biomass (26. 01 t ha −1) and vegetation C density (13. 01 t C ha −1) whereas, soil (35. 23 t C ha −1), litter (0. 64 t C ha −1), and total C density (46. 63 t C ha −1) was maximum under mango-PO closely followed by mango-AHS. The guava-PO system exhibited significantly (p < 0. 05) higher C sequestration (2. 11 t C ha −1 yr −1), and CO 2 abatement (7. 76 t CO 2 ha −1 yr −1) rate compared to other systems with C credit generation of 129. 76 US ha −1 year −1. However, mango-AHS was the most lucrative system providing net returns of 4835. 48 US ha −1 yr −1 and 5. 87 benefit–cost ratio. The C credits help in getting farmers an additional income; however, the economic impact of C credit was low (1. 16–6. 80%) when weighed against the overall economic efficacy of the different systems. Overall, the study concluded that farmers in the region should adopt fruit-based systems, especially agroforestry systems to establish mutually beneficial relationships between mitigation of climate change and livelihood stability. Graphical Abstract
Singh et al. (Sat,) studied this question.