Biodiverse food plants in the semiarid region of Brazil have unknown potential: A systematic review

Abstract

Food biodiversity presents one of the most significant opportunities to enhance food and nutrition security today. The lack of data on many plants, however, limits our understanding of their potential and the possibility of building a research agenda focused on them. Our objective with this systematic review was to identify biodiverse food plants occurring in the Caatinga biome, Brazil, strategic for the promotion of food and nutrition security. We selected studies from the following databases: Web of Science, Medline/PubMed (via the National Library of Medicine), Scopus and Embrapa Agricultural Research Databases (BDPA). Eligible were original articles, published since 2008, studying food plants occurring in the Caatinga. We assessed the methodological quality of the studies we selected. We reviewed a total of fifteen studies in which 65 plants that met our inclusion criteria were mentioned. Of this amount, 17 species, including varieties, subspecies, and different parts of plants, had data on chemical composition, in addition to being mentioned as food consumed by rural communities in observational ethnobotanical studies. From the energy and protein data associated with these plants, we produced a ranking of strategic species. The plants with values higher than the average of the set were: Dioclea grandiflora Mart. ex Benth (mucunã), Hymenaea courbaril L. (jatobá), Syagrus cearensis Noblick (coco-catolé), Libidibia ferrea (Mart. ex Tul.) L.P.Queiroz (jucá), Sideroxylon obtusifolium (Roem. & Schult.) T. D.Penn. (quixabeira). We suggest that the scientific community concentrates research efforts on tree legumes, due to their resilience and physiological, nutritional, and culinary qualities.

The prevalence of dermatophytoses in Brazil: a systematic review

“…After analysing all of the items, the studies received one point for each criterion met in both assessment tools. Based on these grades, we used the evaluation criteria developed by Jacob, Araújo de Medeiros and Albuquerque [14] to categorize the quality of the studies. These criteria were: strong – when the study met more than 80 % of the criteria; moderate – from 50–80 %; and weak/poor – less than 50 %.…”

A proline derivative-enriched methanol fraction from Sideroxylon obtusifolium leaves (MFSOL) stimulates human keratinocyte cells and exerts a healing effect in a burn wound model

“…Besides the interest in bioactive compounds, this plant’s fruit also has a high nutritional potential ( 25 ). A previously published detailed metabolic profile of the ethanol extract of S. obtusifolium leaves revealed saponins and flavonoids as the main constituents.…”

Biodiversity in Food Consumption Studies

“…For example, when reviewing studies concerning BFP in the Brazilian Caatinga, one of us identified local consumption of an UFP (mucunã), considered toxic because of chemical composition studies (Grant et al 1986), (Dioclea grandiflora Mart. ex Benth) (Jacob et al 2020). Mucunã seeds likely contain small molecular weight components that cause its toxicity and which can be eliminated through exhaustive dialysis (Grant et al 1986).…”

“…In this chapter, our focus is on biodiverse food plants. The definition of biodiverse food plants (BFP) involves the agricultural diversity of conventional crops cultivated locally (e.g., varieties of beans, rice, corn, banana), together with unconventional food plants (UFP), (usually native, neglected, and rarely available in the marketplace) (Jacob and Albuquerque 2020). Despite the potential of these plants to promote sustainable food systems and diets, when we review the literature in dietary assessment studies, we notice a gap in methods for gathering and assessing the intake of these plants.…”