Endemic wild Vegetables and Fruits- great companions- from North Western Ghats- Sahyadri

Western Ghat : Through Canopy

                                                        

Welcome !! to my blog on Endemic Plants and Vegetables. I am working on compiling and publish various aspects about endemic fruits and vegetables from Western Ghats- Northern region, famously termed as Sahyadri Mountains. This I am planning to do, out of my passion in understanding the nature around us. also, will be writing about the various endemic plants and vegetables along with interesting recipes.

These endemic plants which grow in wild and sometimes difficult to bring the wild in to your garden or paddy fields.  This is owing to many reasons, one of is the living togetherness of various plants, trees and there closely connect with the local climate, environment and geomorphological conditions. Famously can be termed as Biodiversity. So, it may be worth to conserve, develop or even protect the biodiversity of the area to bring the ecological values. One of such ecological value is endemic fruits and vegetables.

We are also aware of the fact that Western Ghat itself is biodiversity hot spot and majority of the part is ecologically sensitive as well. Some part of the mountain is already having World Heritage Conservation Status.

Endemism is the one of the important parameters in ecology which indicates the availability of plants, trees within very confined area of the earth. These plants will not grow in wild anywhere like that. True you may find these plants germinating else away from their native wild, but may not bear flowers, fruits and on time scale will die away. Hence protecting endemism is critical factor.

Few of the vegetables growing in wild, are spread over larger land area and geographical presence for example Carissa carandas. And efforst are also made to bring them in cultivation fields. But still there are many unexplored vegetables and fruits. We may not be able to mark all of them as Endemic variety but definitely they are growing in wild and many of them are endemic so for the purpose of this blog, we will term them as Wild Vegetables.

So, with this basic introduction about the biodiversity and endemism, lets start our blog on endemic vegetables and fruits of Western Ghat.

The wild vegetables are seasonal in nature and are already part of food of tribes, locals. These are normally collected from wild by individual or self-help group people, generally without damaging the plants and used for individual use and as well brought to near by towns for selling in the open market.

When the importance of these vegetables is known to all, the jungles will be conserved by locals, tribes as by then it will be realized by them the economical value of ecology. So, in fact the publicity and use of endemic wild vegetable will protect the local forests. And the deforestation pressure on the forests of western ghats will definitely get reduced and conservation, restoration efforts will begin.

 Western Ghat: A Waterfall

                                                                   

Brief Information:

During the monsoon season in Western Ghats (Sahyadri), we see only shades of green all along. The Sahyadri is house of seasonal endemic plants including abundant, vulnerable, endangered species which are mainly annual, either herbs or climbers. All this growth is contributed by rains and humus layers growing every year, post monsoon deciduous times. This vegetative growth is in its natural environment with fragile bio diversity supporting. This helps to offer beautiful landscape which has tourist attractions.

The beauty of nature does not stop here. The locals and tribal treat this beauty as one of the sources of income. They engage themselves in collecting the edible herbs as whole body, leaves, flowers, fruits of edible plants. These naturally grown vegetables are available in market during specific period of the years at nearest peri, semi or urban areas. These vegetables are accepted in local market as seasonal, healthy, true organic vegetables. Customer do prefer to buy and consume on larger scale. There is definitely a class of consumers who wait for naturally grown vegetables to arrive in the market, on onset of monsoon and like to enjoy pure natural and organic highly nutritional vegetables grown in nature. This collection also helps tribes to earn their daily life.

Though we are basically focusing now on monsoon grown vegetables, since the quantum and variety is more. Sahyadri in reality blesses us through out the year, through out the various seasons with varieties of naturally grown vegetables.

This is the list of such famous naturally grown vegetables, this list is endless, but let’s read about few of them as sample.

Sl No	Local Name	Part of plant used	Scientific Name	Period of availability	Location
1	Kartoli	Fruits	Momordica dioica	July-August	North Sahyadri as climber
2	Karvand	Fruits	Carissa carandas	April-Early June	All over Sahyadri
3	Takla	Leaves	Cassia tora	July-August	All Sahyadri as undergrowth
4	Bharangi	Leaves, Flowers	Clerodendrum serratum	August-September	North to Mid Sahyadri
5	Abai	Pods	Canavalia ensiformis	Jan-March	North Sahyadri
6	Agasti	Flowers		Dec – April	All Sahyadri
7	Jambhool	Fruit and seeds	Syzygium cumini	May-June	All Sahyadri and cultivated as well
8	Amba( Mango)	Fruit	Magnifera indica	March-June	All Sahyadri in wild and on large scale cultivated variety is Alphonso mangoes.
9	Shevga	Pods, Leaves, Flowers	Moringa oleifera	Dec-March	All Sahyadri in wild and cultivated as side crop

                           

   Carissa carandas (Karvand)  

Above are few samples, we have as many as famous plants like, Asparagus, Chlorophytum, Nevala, Phodshi, Dinda, Mayalu, Tilvan, and so on and on….

We find few of competitions are held at local levels to develop various recipes for seasonal naturally grown and collected vegetables.

It’s a challenge to grow these naturally grown vegetables in farms due to lack of bio diversity support and less efforst to do so. However, few of naturally grown plants have medicinal values, these are tried in farm.

These plans and products are available only for a limited period hence we need to adopt to some techniques to preserve these vegetables and fruits and make them available through out the year.

 

Why processing:

· The nutritional values available naturally.

· To extend the availability of True Organic.

· To increase the popularity of such vegetables.

Major advantages of processing

· Will help generate employment and organizing the way naturally grown vegetables market.

· To create new value chain in food processing.

· To help to conserve the biodiversity and unleashing ecological social value of Sahyadri.

· To create research ideas.

· To tap export market.

Food processing techniques suggested:

We can use basically 3 types of processing techniques. The selection of processing technique is solely depending upon the physical and chemical properties of vegetables and the form of product we are trying to offer to customer i.e. unprocessed raw vegetables or processed ready to cook and serve products.

· Aseptic processing: By using thermal methods and packings can be in bulk glass jars, tin cans, aluminum cans or sachets.

· Dehydration: This is traditional method, can be considered as solar drying, tray drying and followed by flex packaging.  

· Special techniques: costlier way like cold storage, fridge drying in bulk, suitable for bulk ordering and high value naturally grown vegetables collection.

We may like to understand in which form we have to present these vegetables to prospective customers i.e. raw, in shape as collected, powder, dry half cooked, full cooked and dried. These will decide the process and cost of processing.

All above processing will result in to a shelf life of 6 Month to 18 Month depending upon, vegetables physiochemical properties and format of end product we are offering to customers.

Way forward:

We all are aware of tomato, cabbage, broccoli etc but have less knowledge about the vegetables and fruits growing in our back yard. This may be due to lack of awareness and availability in quantity and time, as well. But it is researched by various experts that these wild varieties offer some medicinal and health values to user. Therefore, bringing wild vegetables in to everyone’s food dish may be interesting and exciting experience.

With this some basic information, we will start reading about each type of fruit and vegetable in some details starting from upcoming blog on same subject. I will also try to write about the efforts taken up by individuals to bring these wild vegetables to main stream of vegetables-fruit market.

So, happy reading my blog- on endemic and wild fruits and vegetables of North Western Ghats- Sahyadri.