The rediscovery of popular culture has become a scientific investigation, but also a preservation and an enhancement of the local traditions and of the "popular knowledge". This cultural context, arisen in the last decade, has exponentially increased the interest in food consumption of Wild Edible Plants (WEP). The high consumption of fruit and vegetables, as a characteristic of the Mediterranean diet, has traditionally included wild fruits but especially wild vegetables, as reported by many ethnobotanical studies (1, 2, 3). These WEP, also known as alimurgical plants, have in the past played an important historical role in integrating and enriching the diet based on basic agricultural food (eg 4, 5), considered an integral part of the Mediterranean basin diet (6, 7). Although many species considered alimurgic are widespread throughout the Mediterranean basin, only few species (about 30) are currently used in the human food comsuption (2). The creation of a database of the Italian alimurgical flora has therefore the aim to systematize the baggage of the extensive (and often disordered) knowledge on the WEP acquired in Italy in the last 100 years, creating an easyto-read tool not only for purely speculative purposes but also for the practical ones (eg cultivation, presence of active compounds, etc.). The design and population of the database have been performed by means of the discovery and the analysis of bibliographic resources from 121 ethnobotanical and phytoalimurgical works published in Italy since 1918 to these days. For each of the 465 alimurgic species considered and reported in the database, 95 fields related to taxonomic, morphological, geographical and food use characteristics were considered. The organization of this database and its internal structure will allow the retrieval of information through the online query, an evidence-based information resource, which will be available in the near future and useful for those scientific communities that will want to take advantage of it by having of a shared data set. The aim of this study is, in short, to provide an interesting tool to be used with the aim of increasing in value the alimurgical species - not commonly or rarely used - but considered of a great nutritional and organoleptic value. The study presumes for the WEP, also the creation of a production chain (from population research to cultivation and marketing).
A database of alimurgical plants in Italy / Bufano, Annarita; Paura, Bruno; DI IORIO, Angela; Brugiapaglia, Elisabetta. - (2018), pp. 157-157. (Intervento presentato al convegno 113° Congresso della Società Botanica Italiana V INTERNATIONAL PLANT SCIENCE CONFERENCE (IPSC) tenutosi a Fisciano, SA, Italy).
A database of alimurgical plants in Italy
Angela Di Iorio;
2018
Abstract
The rediscovery of popular culture has become a scientific investigation, but also a preservation and an enhancement of the local traditions and of the "popular knowledge". This cultural context, arisen in the last decade, has exponentially increased the interest in food consumption of Wild Edible Plants (WEP). The high consumption of fruit and vegetables, as a characteristic of the Mediterranean diet, has traditionally included wild fruits but especially wild vegetables, as reported by many ethnobotanical studies (1, 2, 3). These WEP, also known as alimurgical plants, have in the past played an important historical role in integrating and enriching the diet based on basic agricultural food (eg 4, 5), considered an integral part of the Mediterranean basin diet (6, 7). Although many species considered alimurgic are widespread throughout the Mediterranean basin, only few species (about 30) are currently used in the human food comsuption (2). The creation of a database of the Italian alimurgical flora has therefore the aim to systematize the baggage of the extensive (and often disordered) knowledge on the WEP acquired in Italy in the last 100 years, creating an easyto-read tool not only for purely speculative purposes but also for the practical ones (eg cultivation, presence of active compounds, etc.). The design and population of the database have been performed by means of the discovery and the analysis of bibliographic resources from 121 ethnobotanical and phytoalimurgical works published in Italy since 1918 to these days. For each of the 465 alimurgic species considered and reported in the database, 95 fields related to taxonomic, morphological, geographical and food use characteristics were considered. The organization of this database and its internal structure will allow the retrieval of information through the online query, an evidence-based information resource, which will be available in the near future and useful for those scientific communities that will want to take advantage of it by having of a shared data set. The aim of this study is, in short, to provide an interesting tool to be used with the aim of increasing in value the alimurgical species - not commonly or rarely used - but considered of a great nutritional and organoleptic value. The study presumes for the WEP, also the creation of a production chain (from population research to cultivation and marketing).I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
