Nutraceutical Properties of Important Weeds in India

The group of plants, apart from the forest trees, agricultural, horticultural crop and medicinal plants, certain weed plants also play important role to formulate the qualitative and quantitative food and health supplements. These plants may be very specific in producing certain compound to heal the specific ailment chronically or serve as a good nutritive food supplement. There are numbers of crop species have been fortified with multi-nutrients or with the particular nutrient supplements e.g. Rice, Wheat, Maize, Sweet Potato. Instead, weeds remained underutilized and un-exploited and also treated as unwanted species. The nutritive compounds available in these plants such as polyphenols and vitamins can be the extraction from different plant portion to formulate the fortified food or curing medicine. The weed species prevailing in the nature are one of the major sources of dietary and health supplements for humans and animals since past i.e. Amaranthus lividus, Chenopodium album and many more weed species. There is still much to explore the Indian ecologic components present in wild form of flora. Hence, this chapter will majorly contribute to highlight nutritive nutaceurtical and edible weeds prevailing in Indian ecosystems.

Economic Importance of Weeds: A Review

Weeds are plants that are unwanted in a given situation and may be harmful, dangerous or economically detrimental. They are responsible for substantial losses of farm production and extensive damage to the environment. Weeds, through competition with other plants, would almost always have deleterious effects on them and can have a lethal effect on livestock through consumption of weeds containing poisonous chemicals in the pasture. Weed invasion has become the most dreaded and deleterious impact of weeds in nature; it adversely affects agriculture, alters the balance of ecological communities, disrupts the natural diversity and interferes in the aesthetic value of the environment. Weeds can interfere in water management, thereby reducing the economic value of water. Weeds, however, besides their deleterious impacts in nature, have many beneficial properties, which include, but not limited to benefits of weeds to companion plants, ethnomedical and ethnopharmaceutical uses of weeds, ethnobotanical uses of wild edible weeds, and the use of weeds as feed for livestock. In the light of myriads of deleterious effects and benefits accompanying weeds, it is suggested that more studies should be carried out on weed control and weed management. Also, further explorations on the potential uses of weeds to man, his environments and livestock should be undertaken.

Weeds as important vegetables for farmers

The objective of this study was to investigate the multiple uses and cognitive importance of edible weeds in Northeast Thailand. Research methods included focus group discussions and freelistings. A total of 43 weeds consumed as vegetable were reported, including economic, naturalized, agricultural and environmental weeds. The weedy vegetables varied considerably on edible parts, presenting both reproductive (flowers, fruits and seeds) and vegetative organs (shoots, leaves, flower stalks, stems or the whole aerial part). The results of this study show that weedy vegetables are an important resource for rice farmers in this region, not only as a food but also because of the multiple additional uses they have, especially as medicine. The fact that the highest Cognitive Salience Index (<em>CSI</em>) scores of all wild vegetables freelisted corresponded to weeds, reinforces the assertion that weeds are culturally cognitively important for local farmers as a vegetable source. This is a key finding, given that these species are targets of common pesticides used in this region.

Between Plenty and Poverty Foraging in the Salento with Patience Gray

Patience Gray was one of the first food writers to celebrate the culinary and cultural significance of edible weeds and plants. In 1970 she and her husband, the Belgian sculptor Norman Mommens, settled in the far south of Italy. It was the endpoint of their Mediterranean odyssey, which had taken them to the Greek island of Naxos, Carrara, in northwestern Tuscany, Catalonia, the Veneto, and finally Puglia. Gray’s Honey from a Weed, the product of those travels, remains one of the best texts on wild foods and on edible weeds in particular. Drawing on Gray’s unpublished letters and manuscripts this essay explores the life of one of the twentieth century’s most unusual and often overlooked food writers. The contemporary uses and significance of edible weeds and plants are also discussed through foraging trips and interviews with Gray’s friends and neighbors. Though Gray warned that traditional ways of life were dying out, it is clear that foraging is still an important part of the Salentine diet.