Bamboo forest resources of India and its role in food security -A review

Abstract

Bamboo, the fastest growing plant, is estimated to cover 8.96 million ha of the total 63.3 million ha forest area of India. The plant is intricately associated with humans from times immemorial. Though popularly known for industrial usage, a lesser known fact of bamboos is the utilization of its juvenile shoots as food that can be consumed fresh, fermented, canned or pickled. Bamboo shoots have high nutritive value containing low fats and cholesterol and high amount of carbohydrate, proteins, minerals and dietary fibres. It holds great promise for utilization as health food because of presence of bioactive compounds which is found to have medicinal properties. Being one of the fastest growing plants, its shoots can be utilized for feeding the ever increasing human population and also because of its nutritional and therapeutic values, the shoots can be used to make up for the dietary deficiencies of nutrients in the diet.