This study deals with traditional ecological knowledge on fruit trees at Estirão Comprido community, located on the banks of Cuiabá River, in Barão de Melgaço, Pantanal Matogrossense. Twenty fishermen were interviewed, using free lists, which were evaluated by Smith's Salience Index and cultural consensus analysis, using the software ANTHROPAC 4.0. Results indicated that traditional ecological knowledge on fruit trees involves 30 species distributed in 21 families. Smith's Salience Index showed four ruptures on the rank and frequency of answers; the first rupture included one species, the second eight species, the third four species and fourth 17 species. The cultural consensus of fishermen on such traditional knowledge concentrated on nine fruit tree species: "parada", "coquinho", "marmelada", "roncador", "sardinha", "timbó", "acaiá", "jenipava" and "taiuiá", verified by the relationship between factors, where the first factor was approximately nine-fold higher than the second one, pseudo-reliability = 0.951. This study indicated that Pantanal community presents knowledge about fruit trees, the base of the food chain for commercially important fish.
Pantanal; traditional community; fruit plants; fishing