Use of underutilized green leafy vegetables as food nutrition and ethnobotanical among rural community of Odisha: A review

Abstract

In the current era of deforestation, well supported by gradual extinction of medicinally and economically important flora, traditional knowledge holds a valuable option in order to keep a balancing role towards biodiversity conservation leading to sustainability, hence needs to be focused and disseminated generation wise. Every crop has its own benefits to serve mankind. Green leafy vegetables are important group of nutrient dense commodity regarded as natures’ anti-aging wonders, inexpensive food resource and a future herbal medicine owing to its concentrated and overloaded source of nutrients and phytochemicals. Unfortunately, some of them are still confined to local habitat and not explore commercially, accompanied by rare consumption. As leafy vegetables serve an important and diverse component in regular diet of rural and tribal communities satisfying nutritional need and contribute to livelihood as a food and medicine, hence can be considered as a potential tool to obtain sustainable agriculture, safeguarding the nature thus can incorporated with other commercial crops leading to minimizing the scarcity of traditional food availability and danger of extinction. The current paper enlists the baseline information about medicinal properties, Nutritional quality and health benefits of some non-cultivated leafy vegetables from various regions of Odisha. Leafy vegetables, the commodity of nutritional significance is important horticultural produce and form integral part of the rural and tribal household.