Promoting food security and enhancing Nigeria's small farmers' income through value-added processing of lesser-known and under-utilized indigenous fruits and vegetables

Abstract

In Nigeria and other African countries, there are hundreds of lesser-known indigenous crops as well as other food plants gathered from the wild that contribute to food security and play vital roles in the nutrition of the people particularly the rural populace. These native crops and wild food plants that have received little research attention or extension activities and have been largely neglected by the mainstream of international science include a wide variety of wild indigenous fruits and vegetables that enrich the diet of the rural populace and could thrive with little care and without the use of costly agricultural inputs such as fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Among them are numerous fruits of Nigerian trees that grow wild in the rain forest and the woodland savanna zones or are cultivated on small, compound farms. These fruits that are consumed fresh are rich sources of nutrients including ascorbic acid, provitamin A carotenoids, minerals and nutraceuticals with health-promoting benefits. There is the need to promote the cultivation and utilization of many of these indigenous fruit trees including African star apple (Chrysophyllum albidum), African mango (Irvingia gabonensis), African or native pear (Dacryodes edulis) and hog plum (Spondias mombin) that are also of considerable environmental significance and protect them from uncontrolled wood felling activities that result in deforestation. Laboratory studies have shown that good quality fruit leathers, jams, juices and other drinks can be produced from several lesser-known and under-utilized Nigerian fruits and vegetables including African star apple (C. albidum), African mango (I. gabonensis), hog plum (S. mombin), tamarind (Tamarindus indica) and roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) using simple procedures suitable for small-scale commercial production including osmotic dehydration, open-kettle jam-making process and mechanical juice extraction followed by hot water pasteurization. Removing the constraints to the development of small-scale food industries which include inadequate electricity supply, use of inappropriate technology, inadequate working capital, high interest rates, and limited access to banks and other financial institutions would facilitate commercial production of these value-added foods in rural communities thereby reducing post-harvest losses, promoting food security, enhancing small farmers' income and contributing to sustainable rural development.