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Background Central Myanmar is located in the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot, and the Bamar people are the main ethnic group, which settled there over 1000 years ago. Despite being the core region of the country, central Myanmar has been ignored in previous ethnobotanical studies. Local healthy foods and knowledge are regarded as treasures for resource development and pharmaceutical drug discovery, and market surveys are a good strategy in ethnobotanical research. Thus, we collected and documented typical vegetables and local knowledge in local markets and then analysed the diversity and local knowledge of these vegetables. Materials and methods Observations and interviews were used in the field study, and 10 markets and fairs were selected in central Myanmar. A total of 277 vegetable stalls or shops were visited. We compared the local knowledge we collected with selected important and typical herbal books on traditional Myanmar medicine. Quantitative analysis, including frequency of citation (FC), relative frequency of citation (RFC) and use value (UV), was used to assess the diversity and local knowledge of these vegetables. Results A total of 132 plant taxa from 47 botanical families and 116 genera were collected. Most (106 taxa, 80.3%) of these vegetables were cited by the informants as functional foods that had health benefits, while others were regarded as merely “good for health”. The main health function of the vegetables was treating digestive problems. Sixty-four species were recorded in selected herbal books on traditional Myanmar medicine, and forty-seven taxa were not recorded in these books but were nonetheless used as healthy vegetables by local people. Twenty-eight species of vegetables were collected from wild places. Conclusion The diversity and local knowledge of healthy vegetables in central Myanmar were rich. Nevertheless, the diversity of wild vegetables was seemingly relatively low. The possible reason was that we counted only the vegetables that were from entirely wild sources as “wild vegetables”. The most frequently cited vegetables were commonly cultivated species, which reflects the fact that plants cultivated on a large scale comprise the major source of vegetables. Some lesser known vegetables could reflect the unique food culture of local people, but most of these were cited only a few times by the interviewees, which caused low UV and RFC rankings for them in the league table. In addition, future research should pay more attention to the food safety of these vegetables.

BackgroundCentral Myanmar locate in the Indo-Burma Biodiversity hotspot, and Barma people is the main ethnic group which had settled there over thousands years ago. Nevertheless, as the major Myanmar ethnic group, Bamar people were ignored in Ethnobotanical studies. Market surveys are considered a good strategy for the preliminary screening of potential Ethnopharmacological plant resources. In the present study, we focused on the local health knowledge of vegetables of Bamar people in local markets.Materia and methods:In the present study, we surveyed the local markets, then recorded, collected, identified and catalogued the typical vegetables, and document the knowledge of health benefits of the collected vegetables, then analyze the information of vegetables and local knowledge. The observation and interviews were used in field study, and the Ethnobotanical Indexes were used to analyze the local knowledge. We compare the local knowledge we collected with traditional medicine literatures.Results10 Markets and fairs were selected in Mandalay Region, Magway Region, Yangon Region and Nay Pyi Taw Union Territory, and in a total of 277 vegetable stalls or shops were visited. 132 plant taxa were collected and identified. Many of the healthy vegetables were cited as functional food had health benefit by the informants (106 taxa, 80.3%) while others were just regarded as “good for health” (26 taxa, 19.7%). Over half of the taxa were recorded as traditional medicinal plants with health functions in previous studies. The main health function of the vegetables was treating digestion problems.ConclusionThe diversity and use of the health vegetables in central Myanmar were very rich. Some previous Phytochemical and Pharmacological studies on these plants showed that their extracts had effective activities or compounds related to health functions. It should be noted the food safety of the vegetables in future researches.Yu Zhang and Jian-Wen Li contribute equally to the article.

This book enumerates the diversity in the prevalence and use of vegetables in parts of Myanmar. It draws on our field studies in Myanmar, where we encountered people consuming interesting plant species as vegetables. For example, we saw parts of the moorva dregea (Wattakaka volubilis), belonging to the family Apocyanaceae, and jengkol (Archidendron pauciflorum), belonging to the family Fabaceae, being consumed as vegetables. These plants are generally considered poisonous by scientists. Likewise, the roots of the winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus) and the seedlings of the wine palm (Borassus flabellifer), which have a pungent taste, are very popular vegetables in the dry season in Myanmar. Tea is a globally well-known and widely-consumed beverage. However, in Myanmar, Pu’er tea (Camellia sinensis var. assamica) is consumed as a beverage and a vegetable. The leaf that is consumed as a vegetable is fermented and preserved.