Underutilized crop

Neglected and underused crops are domesticated plant species that have been used for centuries or even millennia for their food, fibre, fodder, oil or medicinal properties, but have been reduced in importance over time owing to particular supply and use constraints. These can include, inter alia, poor shelf life, unrecognized nutritional value, poor consumer awareness and reputational problems (famine food or "poor people's food", sometimes due to the modernization of agricultural practices). Some crops have been so neglected that genetic erosion of their genepools has become so severe that they are often regarded as lost crops.

As the demand for plant and crop attributes changes (reappraisal or discovery of nutritional traits, culinary value, adaptation to climate change, etc.), neglected crops can overcome the constraints to the wider production and use. As a matter of fact, many formerly neglected crops are now globally significant crops (oilpalm, soybean, kiwi fruit). Although the options for scaling up neglected crops for large-scale agriculture appear to be increasingly exhausted, many species have the potential to contribute to food security, nutrition, dietary and culinary diversification, health and income generation. They also provide environmental services. It is impossible to define what would constitute "proper" or "correct" levels of use; however, many neglected species evidently are underused relative to their nutritional value and productivity.

Just three crops - maize, wheat and rice - account for about 50% of the world's consumption of calories and protein. About 95% of the world's food needs are provided by just 30 species of plants. In stark contrast, at least 12,650 species names have been compiled as edible. Neglected and underutilized plants are those that could be - and, in many cases, historically have been - used for food and other uses on a larger scale.

Such crop species have also been described as "minor", "orphan", "promising" and "little-used".

It is difficult to precisely define which attributes make a crop "underutilized", but often they display the following features:

Neglected crops are primarily grown by traditional farmers. These species may be widely distributed beyond their centres of origin but tend to occupy special niches in the local production and consumption systems. They are important for the subsistence of local communities, yet remain poorly documented and neglected by the mainstream research and development activities.

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