Underutilized Vegetable Crops

Of the 2 lac 70 thousand plant species, about 3000 have been used as food. Of these, only 200 species have been domesticated and are cultivated for food. Just, 30 species are considered important food crops and are responsible for 95 per cent of human nutrition. With a wide range of climatic conditions from the Torrid to the Arctic, India possesses a good genetic wealth of domesticated crops and out of 20,000 angiosperm plants, 600 plant species constitute the diversity in vegetable crops, however, presently only one fourth are utilized as major vegetable crops and rest are named as minor, underutilized/neglected, rare vegetables, lesser known vegetables, wild edible vegetables and so on. Underutilized/neglected vegetables fall within the broad basket of minor vegetables comprising a long list viz., sweet gourd, spine gourd, snake gourd etc., vegetable lagumes – velvet bean, jack bean, sword bean, tree bean etc, underutilized solanaceous vegetables -tree tomato, pepino etc, underutilized leafy greens and salad, underutilized tuber crops, drumstick and curry leaf etc. These vegetables are rich source of phyto-chemicals and posses significant medicinal attributes and are raised organically. The book underutilized vegetable crops deals about basic concept, nutritional and medicinal properties, genetic diversity and depletion of genetic wealth and efforts of international organizations in conserving them. Under 12 different chapters viz., underutilized cucurbits, underutilized legumes, underutilized solanaceous crops, underutilized leafy crops, underutilized salad crops, underutilized tuber crops more than 150 vegetables have been dealt by giving their nutritional and medicinal attributes along with cultivation details. Apart from these, separate chapters on drumstick, curry leaf and yam bean have also been given.