Wild Tubers for Food Security: Challenging Ahead in Odisha, India.

Sanjeet Kumar

Ravenshaw University, Cuttack.

sanjeet.biotech@gmail.com

 

From the past, edible wild tubers have played a very vital part in supplementing the diet of the tribal and rural people of India and particularly in Odisha. The dependence of these tuber crops have gradually decline as more exotic foods have been introduces but even now a day aborginals still use them during off farming or famine as a supplement for their basic need of food.  Some of them, tubers are preserved for use in dry period or sold in weekly rural market such are Dioscoria puber ( Khamba aalu ), Dioscorea alata (Desia aalu), Dioscoria bulbifera (Pita aalu) and Amorphophalas painifolius (Ban saru). Apart from their traditional use of food, potentially they have good nutritional food values, which provide the minerals, vitamins, proteins, fibers and carbohydrates in huge amount so helpful in treating energy deficiency. They can eaten raw or as vegetables. They have also rich as medicinal values and used in several diseases as well as offered commercial opportunity as economic plant. They provide fibres which prevent constipation. These types of wild tuber crops can be incorporated in commercial crop plants, which will improve food security, economy in tribal areas and helps in regeneration of barren lands. Therefore it is consider that special attention should be paid in order to maintain and improve this important source of food supply. In Order to remedy, a wider and sustained acceptance of wild tubers as important dietary components must be stimulated.