Traditional Food Plants in the Face of Global Change: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Traditional food plant s ( TFP s) are highly nutritious and contain health beneficial metabolites, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. Various communities across the globe, especially in the rural areas, rely on the locally available TFPs for their nutritional and health‐related needs. The TFPs are considered important because they are locally available alternative sources of food and nutrition. However, they remain largely neglected to date despite their huge nutritional importance and potential. Interest in TFPs has recently increased especially because of the disruptions of the food supply chains caused by recurrent lockdowns during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Interruptions to long‐distance food supply chains expose the vulnerabilities associated with the globalised interconnected food systems. Recent literature suggests that localised food systems are more resilient, sustainable, and adaptive especially during times of pandemics, civil unrest, and conflicts. Since TFPs offer several benefits over the globalised mainstream food systems, it is important to explore their roles and develop research strategies to provide insights and to support their more widespread use in future. Scientists and food and nutrition experts also suggest that the post‐pandemic situation will compel food scientists, breeders, and crop bioengineers to realign their approach towards food production and consumption systems that are more locally suited. Significant knowledge has been gained through basic research on the diversity and availability of a plethora of TFPs in various parts of the world, including India, Africa, and South America. Limited genetic and genomic studies have also been performed with TFPs, and they provide very important insights into important genes and other regulators governing nutritional and stress‐resilient traits in neglected crops. Some crops are shown to have better traits than the currently available mainstream crops. Many studies have pointed towards cultivation, domestication, and improvement of regionally important TFPs for better climate resilience, sustainability, and adaptability. While very few TFPs have been genetically edited successfully, and gene‐edited TFPs are not commercially available yet, there is increasing evidence that there is a huge potential for the revitalisation and introduction of these ancient crops to the mainstream food baskets of the public. In this review article, we critically examine the TFPs and their regional importance in the local traditional food systems. The richness of TFPs during the ancient period and various reasons for their disappearance from the food basket, the re‐emergence of TFPs by recognising their importance in the present scenario, and the criteria for utilisation of TFPs to attain food security in the future are discussed comprehensively in the review. We provide a futuristic outlook on the importance, scope, and progress on the improvement of TFPs for valuable traits for ensuring food security of the burgeoning global population.