Ethnobotany - Plants As Food

Plant products are the most important sources of food for people. We eat plants directly, in the form of raw or cooked vegetables and fruits, and as processed foods such as bread. We also eat plants indirectly, as when we consume the meat of pigs or eggs of chickens that have themselves fed on plant foods.

Relatively few species of plants comprise most of the food that people eat. The world's most important crops are cereals, such as barley, maize, rice, sorghum, and wheat. Tuber crops are also important, such as cassava, potato, sweet potato, and turnip. However, remarkably few plants are commonly cultivated, amounting to only a few hundred species. Moreover, only 20 species account for 90% of global food production, and just three (wheat, maize, and rice) for more than half.

There is an enormously larger number of plants that are potentially edible (about 30,000 species), including about 7,000 species that are being utilized locally by indigenous peoples as nutritious sources of food. Potentially, many of these minor crops could be cultivated more widely, and thereby provide a great benefit to a much greater number of people.

A few examples of highly nutritious foods used by local cultures, which could potentially be cultivated to feed much larger numbers of people, include arrachacha (Arracia xanthorhiza), an Andean tuber; amaranths (three Amaranthus spp.), tropical American and Andean grains; Buffalo gourd (Curcurbita foetidissima ), a Mexican tuber; maca (Lepidium meyenii), an Andean root vegetable; spirulina (Spirulina platensis), an African blue-green alga; wax gourd (Benincasa hispida), an Asian melon. These and many other local, traditional foods have been "discovered" by ethnobotanists, and could well prove to be important foods for many people in the future.