Traditional leafy vegetables (TLVs) are rich in beneficial bioactive compounds and mineral elements. The rural areas of Kerala, India, have a diversity of unconventional TLVs, and only limited research is available on their nutritional and biochemical composition. Therefore, this study was designed to evaluate the mineral elements, metabolites, antioxidants, antioxidant activity, and proximate composition of 14 TLVs. The results show that among the selected TLVs, Talinum triangulare exhibited the highest Zn (1214 mg/kg DW) content, whereas the highest amount of Ca (13,532 mg/kg DW) was found in Centella asiatica. GC–MS analysis of these 14 plants unveiled a total of 193 metabolites. The metabolic pathways with high impact were associated with alanine, aspartate, glutamate, galactose, and glyoxylate–dicarboxylate metabolism and aminoacyl tRNA synthesis. Several metabolites showed differential expression across the samples. Celosia argentia, Ipomoea batatas (sweetheart cultivar), and Ipomoea aquatica showed the highest expression of metabolites such as caffeic acid and xylitol. I. batatas cv. sidekick black (0.49 mg/mL) and Cnidoscolus aconitifolius (0.135 mg/mL) demonstrated the highest antioxidant activities. The 14 plants had varying levels of fiber (2.01–7.31%), fat (2.68–9.36%), protein (4.55–22.32%), and carbohydrate (34.62–69.3%). Overall, these TLVs have high nutritional potential and health-protecting properties, which can boost the well-being of consumers.
Mangroves are globally recognized for their ecological, economic, social, and cultural importance. They provide a variety of goods and services to humanity. Mangroves are a group of trees and shrubs sheltered in the intertidal zones of tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate regions of the planet. They are adapted to a wide range of environmental conditions such as salinity, waterlogging, and inundation. They also are one of the most productive and biodiverse ecosystems on earth as they support the existence of a large number of organisms. Despite multiple goods and ecological services they deliver, mangrove ecosystems are one of the most vulnerable ecosystems because of several threats such as overexploitation, conversion, and encroachment of mangrove habitats for agricultural and settlement purposes, a decline in freshwater and silt deposition, heavy metal pollution, global warming, and sea level rise. This chapter provides important recent developments in the mangrove distribution, species diversity, diverse goods and services that they provide, threats to their survival, policies and global initiatives for their conservation, and challenges associated with conservation and restoration programs.
Abstract Traditional food plant s ( TFP s) are highly nutritious and contain health beneficial metabolites, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. Various communities across the globe, especially in the rural areas, rely on the locally available TFPs for their nutritional and health‐related needs. The TFPs are considered important because they are locally available alternative sources of food and nutrition. However, they remain largely neglected to date despite their huge nutritional importance and potential. Interest in TFPs has recently increased especially because of the disruptions of the food supply chains caused by recurrent lockdowns during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Interruptions to long‐distance food supply chains expose the vulnerabilities associated with the globalised interconnected food systems. Recent literature suggests that localised food systems are more resilient, sustainable, and adaptive especially during times of pandemics, civil unrest, and conflicts. Since TFPs offer several benefits over the globalised mainstream food systems, it is important to explore their roles and develop research strategies to provide insights and to support their more widespread use in future. Scientists and food and nutrition experts also suggest that the post‐pandemic situation will compel food scientists, breeders, and crop bioengineers to realign their approach towards food production and consumption systems that are more locally suited. Significant knowledge has been gained through basic research on the diversity and availability of a plethora of TFPs in various parts of the world, including India, Africa, and South America. Limited genetic and genomic studies have also been performed with TFPs, and they provide very important insights into important genes and other regulators governing nutritional and stress‐resilient traits in neglected crops. Some crops are shown to have better traits than the currently available mainstream crops. Many studies have pointed towards cultivation, domestication, and improvement of regionally important TFPs for better climate resilience, sustainability, and adaptability. While very few TFPs have been genetically edited successfully, and gene‐edited TFPs are not commercially available yet, there is increasing evidence that there is a huge potential for the revitalisation and introduction of these ancient crops to the mainstream food baskets of the public. In this review article, we critically examine the TFPs and their regional importance in the local traditional food systems. The richness of TFPs during the ancient period and various reasons for their disappearance from the food basket, the re‐emergence of TFPs by recognising their importance in the present scenario, and the criteria for utilisation of TFPs to attain food security in the future are discussed comprehensively in the review. We provide a futuristic outlook on the importance, scope, and progress on the improvement of TFPs for valuable traits for ensuring food security of the burgeoning global population.
The noncultivated or nondomesticated food plants that are collected from the wild natural habitats for consumption are called wild food plants (WFPs). They enrich the dietary diversity and significantly contribute to the micro and macronutrients of the body. WFPs are popular as a potential source of income for the local communities, and they ensure food supply during famine periods. The capacity to survive in harsh environmental conditions contributes to the stress adaptation potential of the these plants. Therefore, WFPs can be explored as a climate change adaptation strategy or resilient plants for agriculture. In the scenario of climate change, nutritional and yield reduction of the staple crops, wide diversity of WFPs with regional adaptations can be utilized for crop improvement programs and can significantly improve food security. The popularity of WFPs among ethnic communities is a link between traditional knowledge and modern scientific systems. But the traditional knowledge related to WFPs is being lost. Loss of traditional knowledge related to the WFPs has also threatened their existence. Therefore, it is essential to document and conserve the WFPs and promote their consumption globally. The popularization of WFPs can help to eradicate the hidden hunger and malnutrition among the population since they are a cheap source of locally available nutrient-rich food. The genetic diversity of the WFPs should be protected, and several crop improvement programs can be applied to improve the traits of the plant. The effective exploration of the diversity of WFPs can directly contribute to achieving zero hunger by 2030.
The global climate change and rapid population increase are raising challenges for food security, and it demands efficient crop improvement methods that ensure superior quality and quantity of the crops. The advancements in nanotechnology can be explored to enhance sustainable crop improvement. Recently, nanotechnology has made massive revolutions in solving various problems faced by the human population, including the agriculture, environment and food sectors. In agriculture, nanotechnology has implications on every stage of farming, including seed germination, growth, harvest, processing, storage and transport of agricultural products. Nano fertilisers, nano herbicides, nano-fungicides, nano biosensors, nanoscale genetic carriers, nano-bioremediating agents and nanocomposites for packing are the novel applications of nanotechnology in the crop improvement area. Nanotechnology ensures the site-specific delivery of the nutrients in the plant's target region, which minimises the loss and increases efficiency. The reduced size of the nanomaterials offers a broader surface area for pesticides and fertilisers, drastically escalating disease and pest control in crops as they promise to overcome the shortcomings caused by traditional pesticide application. The advancement in nanotechnology is rapidly contributing to the digitalization of agriculture also. For example, nanotechnology widens the horizons of high-tech agricultural farms with the aid of biosensors. The synthesis of nano enzymes also revolutionized the stress-tolerant mechanism of the plants by acting as an efficient antioxidant enzyme, and it has been widely used against salinity tolerance recently. The contribution of nanotechnology in effective transfer of genetic material in gene editing and genetic engineering techniques has also significantly contributed towards crop improvement. Nanobioremediation and nanophotocatalysis methods can also remove toxic substances from the environment. It is clear that, nanotechnology driven agri-food sector is expected to bloom in the near future. This review article summarizes the potential benefits of nanotechnology in agriculture and related fields, including the environment and food industry. Although nanotechnology has contributed a lot to the betterment of the world in various ways, they also face several limitations. Despite being a frontier of scientific advancement in the modern era, the negative impacts caused by nanotechnology cannot be sidelined. Therefore, this review also discusses the limitations of nanotechnology in the last section.
Phytochemicals are bioactive non-nutrient plant compounds that are important for the plants and also provide a range of pharmacological activities. Phytochemicals enable plants to overcome temporary or continuous threats to their environment. They also provide health benefits to humans. Various phytochemical molecules that are present in plants include phenolic acids, lignins, tannins, stilbenes, flavonoids, coumarins, alkaloids, amines, betalains, quinones, terpenoids, vitamins and other metabolites. These phytochemicals are derived from various parts of plants such as leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, barks and roots. More than 5000 phytochemicals have been identified, but a large percentage of phytochemicals still needs to be identified. For phytochemical analysis, various fundamental and advanced techniques are used. But the complexity and non-uniformity of the metabolites inside the plants act as a major challenge for the analysis. The conventional methods for the analysis failed to provide accurate and precise results for the analysis. But advancements in analytical platforms increased the accuracy of the phytochemical analysis. The present book chapter discusses the various advanced techniques such as HPLC (high-pressure liquid chromatography), HPTLC (high-performance thin-layer chromatography), GC-MS (gas chromatography-mass spectrometry), LC-MS (liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry), UPLC (ultra performance liquid chromatography), NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) and OPLC (optimum performance laminar chromatography) that are used in the detection and characterization of phytochemicals efficiently from the plant samples that can be applied to understand the therapeutic potential, the nutritional significance and the potential for the production of value-added products and drug discovery.
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