Are weeds an enemy or a multipurpose resource? An ethnobotanical perspective

Zuzana Rottová

Bachelor's thesis

Abstract:

Modern conventional agriculture relies on high input monoculture farming of few domesticated food crops, resulting in decreased dietary diversity and poor nutritional security in the diets of people in developing countries. Weedy species of plants are mostly regarded as harmful to the effectivity of agriculture, yet they represent an easily accessible source of nutrition for rural population. This review investigates the role and importance of weedy species in the tropics, where malnutrition poses a threat to the lives of local people. Sixty-seven species of edible weedy species used as food source in the tropics were extracted from available literature, documenting their distribution, plant part used, mode of consumption, nutritional benefits and antinutritional properties. It was found that most edible weeds contain nutrients and vitamins essential to the human body, and therefore are suitable for supplementing the carbohydrate-based diets of rural people in the tropics. The aspect of traditional medicinal uses was also reviewed, concluding that most of the edible weedy species reported are valued in indigenous traditional medicines for the treatments of various diseases. The results indicate that weeds form integral parts of food baskets of people in the tropics, where indigenous knowledge of wild edible flora remains vivid.

Keywords

agroecology, ethnobotany, food, agrobiodiversity, human nutrition, weed, wild edible plants

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 14. 4. 2022

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: doc. Ing. Zbyněk Polesný, Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences

Bachelor programme:
Tropical Agriculture