Wild Edible Plants in the five Valley Districts of Manipur State, India: A Review

Abstract

Background: The article deals with the status of wild edible plants and their traditional utilization by different villagers of Manipur. The identification of plants useful to man from among naturally found plants do commenced in pre-historic times. Several of these plants are useful in different ways such as food, clothing, shelter, transport, medicine, etc. These useful plants were domesticated by the ancient local peoples in our state.
Objectives: In course of time, the cultivation of many of these plants spread over from the area of domestication to new areas through plant acclimatization and plant breeding. Most of the local peoples of the village purely depend to the wild edible plants for their socio-economic purposes.
Materials And Methods: Study sites were from the five valley districts of Manipur. The authors find out some information on the wild edible plants of Manipur from well-known sources categorizing them into: Wild edible: fruits; medicine; stem, tuber and rhizome; spices and vegetables (Singh and Arora 1978).
Results: The present paper is based on the published records, but findings of wild edible plants are not yet complete. In this paper 15 species were found under the fruit category; 15 species of wild edible plants were under medicinal plants. In spices, there were 9 species, in vegetable 14 species there are. Not only were these other 10 species found under the category for both rhizome and tuber eatable wild species.
Conclusion: Most of the valuable wild edible plants became extinct due to over exploitation and several disturbances to the forest ecosystem. Thus, the traditional knowledge of wild edible plants is declined day by day. Therefore, the present study shall be emphasized for the protection and conservation of the extinct wild edible plant species for the welfare of the future generation.