Sustainable Use of Wild Yams (Dioscorea) by Tribal Communities in Kerala, India
The tubers of wild yams (Dioscorea) form an important source of starchy food, which is consumed by the tribal inhabitants living dependent with the forest. Kerala, India, has a rich diversity of Dioscorea with unique properties, contributing to both food
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Sustainable Use of Wild Yams (Dioscorea) by Tribal Communities in Kerala, India V. Balakrishnan and N. Anil Kumar
Abstract The tubers of wild yams (Dioscorea) form an important source of starchy food, which is consumed by the tribal inhabitants living dependent with the forest. Kerala, India, has a rich diversity of Dioscorea with unique properties, contributing to both food and health security needs of the local communities, especially the tribal communities. This chapter describes the diversity of wild Dioscorea that are found in Kerala part of Western Ghats and that are distinguished based on the morphotaxonomic characters. Wayanad district has about 22 different taxa of Dioscorea, of which 21 are edible and serve as vital food during famine months to forest-dwelling tribes. For classification of wild Dioscorea folk system relies chiefly on the use classes of tubers such as edibility, taste, colour of the flesh, size, direction of growth, fibre content, cooking properties and occasionally its number. A folk taxonomic classification system has been devised by the user communities like Kattunaikka, Muduga and Paniya for the optimum utilization of various Dioscorea taxa. Keywords Yams • Tribal communities • Food scarcity • Folk taxonomy • Medicinal
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Introduction
Dioscorea, belonging to the family Dioscoreaceae, is believed to have originated from Southeast Asia, West Africa and pre-Columbian tropical America (Jayasurya 1984; Mabberly 1997; Wilkin 1998). The genus has about 850 taxa described from all over the world, in which about 50 species are from India, largely in west, east and northeast regions (Prain and Burkill 1936). Fischer and Gamble (1928) reported the occurrence of 23 taxa (16 species and 7 varieties) of Dioscorea from peninsular
V. Balakrishnan (*) • N.A. Kumar M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Community Agrobiodiversity Centre, Puthoorvayal, Meppadi P.O., Kalpetta, Wayanad 673 577, Kerala, India e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 K.P. Laladhas et al. (eds.), Biodiversity for Sustainable Development, Environmental Challenges and Solutions 3, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42162-9_19
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India. Out of the 16 species, D. pentaphylla was described with three varieties and D. oppositifolia and D. bulbifera each with two varieties. Dioscorea shows remarkable variations even within single variety. The morphological characters of this group of plants are highly variable, and this usually makes it difficult to draw up the boundaries of variations by only morphological evidence (Burkill 1924, 1951; Prain and Burkill 1936; Sundara Raghavan 1960; Ayensu 1965, 1972; Abraham and Nair 1979; Jayasurya 1984; Rana 1991; Amalraj et al. 1991; Wilkin 1998; Caddick et al. 2002). It, therefore, demands a comprehensive approach integrating both conventional and frontier techniques for assessing, classifying and understanding the diversity of the Dioscorea complex up to the variety level. The diversity of Dioscorea is rich as evidence
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