In Burkina Faso and other Sahelian countries, people rely on trees and shrubs for their daily life. Despite the importance of forest resources for the livelihood of rural people, Burkina Faso loses approximately 32,000 ha of forest annually. To protect forest genetic resources and improve the well-being of local populations, the National Forest Seed Centre of Burkina Faso developed and implemented methods to utilize local peoples' knowledge of crop seed storage and improve on this knowledge and ability to better protect forest genetic resources. All of the management areas were located in the Sudanian and Sahelian zones of Burkina Faso and part of the semiarid zones of West Africa.

Based on traditional local knowledge of crop seed storage and subsequent experimentation, the study describes innovative methods for characterizing and mapping forest areas for management; selecting the most important tree species whose growth and production should be increased; improving the handling and storage of forest seeds; determining practical and reliable methods to maintain forest seed viability and direct sowing efficiency; identifying simple traditional forest seed storage that allow protection of seeds and control of parasite attacks during storage; and evaluating direct sowing impact on forest regeneration.