Global movement to introduce the importance of native, rare, traditional edible fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants for the school community
Sustainability depends not only on conserving rare flora but also explore the possibility of edibility and nutritive value of those. When the community identifies the taste and the nutritive values and medicinal properties of rare, native fruits, vegetables, and medicinal plants, they will start to add those plants into their home gardens. With the advancement of landscaping activities as a science, people tend to use plants having certain qualities like colorful flowers and leaves to decorate home gardens. Tissue culture technology proliferates these plants very quickly and distributes these plant varieties cost-effectively, allowing to spread rapidly within home garden ecological systems. This selective growing practice reduces the natural diversity of flora and minimizes the natural nutrient profile which is easily accessible not only for humans but also for other important pollinators like, bees, butterflies, small birds, etc.
Therefore, there is a need to introduce the value of these rare, native edible flora to the future community to conserve the gene pool and use it to address the malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies. This could be initiated by introducing a time slot into the school curricula and teach school community about the importance of tasting not only sweets and salt but also other tastes like, sour, bitter and umami to improve health conditions and address the malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies via improving edible biodiversity within home garden ecosystems.
Dr. Xuan Li