Wild desert relatives of crops: their direct uses as food

Abstract

Arid lands worldwide offer a rich variety of wild and indigenous cultivated food plants adapted to low and variable precipitation regimes. For example, the number of edible, ethnographically documented food plant species of the Sonoran Desert in southwestern North America is approximately 450, roughly 20 per cent of that desert’s vascular flora — revised from preliminary estimate in Felger and Nabhan (1978). Estimates of similar magnitude can be made for several other deserts and semi-arid regions around the world, including those in India and Africa, e.g. Bhandari (1978) and Becker (1983).