Abstract
The world population is projected to become 10 billion by the end of this century. This growing population exerts tremendous pressure on our finite food resources. Unfortunately, the lion-share of the global calorie intake is reliant upon a handful of plant species like rice, wheat, maize, soybean and potato. Therefore, it is the need of the hour to expand our dietary reliance to nutritionally rich but neglected, underutilized and yet-to-be-used wild plants. Many wild plants are also having ethnomedicinal and biocultural significance. Owing to their ecosystem plasticity, they are adapted to diverse habitats including marginal, degraded and other disturbed soil systems. Due to these resilient attributes, they can be considered for large-scale cultivation. However, proper biotechnological interventions are important for (i) removing the negative traits (e.g., low yield, slow growth, antinutritional factors, etc.), (ii) improving the positive traits (e.g., nutritional quality, stress tolerance, etc.), as well as (iii) standardizing the mass multiplication and cultivation strategies of such species for various agro-climatic regions. Besides, learning the biocultural knowledge and traditional cultivation practices employed by the local people is also crucial for their exploitation. The Special Issue “Wild Crop Relatives and Associated Biocultural and Traditional Agronomic Practices for Food and Nutritional Security” was intended to showcase the potential wild crop varieties of nutritional significance and associated biocultural knowledge from the diverse agroecological regions of the world and also to formulate suitable policy frameworks for food and nutritional security. The novel recommendations brought by this Special Issue would serve as a stepping stone for utilizing wild and neglected crops as a supplemental food. Nevertheless, long-term cultivation trials under various agro-climatic conditions are utmost important for unlocking the real potential of these species.
Highlights
The recently published “EAT-Lancet Commission Report” [1] pinpoints an astonishing fact that the human diet across the globe is not people and planet friendly, as it is far behind the reference level of essential commodities stipulated for a so called “planetary healthy diet” composed of whole grains, vegetables, fruits and nuts, etc
The current Special Issue is an assemblage of the diverse topics related to wild crops and their sustainable exploitation like agrobiodiversity, adaptive agronomic practices, biocultural knowledge, crop improvement programs, dietary diversification, field gene banks, food and nutritional security, genetic diversity, UN-Sustainable Development Goals, wild crop varieties and traditional agronomic practices, among others
The experimental results confirmed that the application of seaweed extract as a biostimulant has increased the nutritional and biochemical profile of the test plant by several folds, i.e., TSS (93%), phenol (92%), Chanthani et al [35] demonstrated the positive effect of the seaweed extract from Ulva flexuosa on the seed priming of wild tomatoes for increasing the seed germination, growth and yield
Summary
The recently published “EAT-Lancet Commission Report” [1] pinpoints an astonishing fact that the human diet across the globe is not people and planet friendly, as it is far behind the reference level of essential commodities stipulated for a so called “planetary healthy diet” composed of whole grains, vegetables (red, green and orange), fruits and nuts, etc. (www.eatforum.org). The literature provide evidences that ~7000 plant species have been reported from the various agro-climatic regions of the evidences world with nutritional or species medicinal importance [10,11]. ~ 7000 plant have been reported fromMost the various and underutilized were part of the staple diet of the hunter-gatherers and still many species climatic regions of species the world with nutritional or medicinal importance [10,11]. Most of such wild and are the inseparable part of part the diet local diet people and those who areand living close proximity underutilized species were of theofstaple of the hunter-gatherers still in many species are theto inseparable part ofThough the dietsome of local and those who arewidely living in close proximity to nature [10,12–. Crops for a good quality of life and human wellbeing
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