Some 3 billion people in the world live outside the cash economy in the world’s poorest nations. Food security and regular supply are their daily concerns. Chronic malnutrition is a leading cause of death and disease for them. Young children are amongst the most affected. One child every 5-10 seconds dies from undernutrition. Vitamin A deficiency causes night blindness for someone every minute. Most people in tropical and subtropical countries are iron deficient.
Our goal is to provide information that enables people to choose the right plant for their environment, to give them stable food production and a greater choice of plants to enrich their diets and improve their nutritional wellbeing.
The plant fact sheets listed in this collection are only a small portion of those available from FPI. Please check your plant inquiries in the ECHO Search and reference the FPI plant database for further information.
Most of the plants selected to list here are further described in country-specific publications by Food Plant Solutions (FPS in the Search).
8000 Starchy Staples
7000 Legumes
6000 Leafy Greens
5000 Fruits
4000 Vegetables
3000 Nuts, Seeds, Herbs, and other foods
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Asparagus racemosus - Climbing Asparagus
Edible Portion: Root, Tubers, Shoots, Fruit, Leaves, Vegetable, Leaves - Tea, Flower
A creeping or climbing herb or shrub. It has woody stems. It grows 2 m high. It spreads 2 m wide. The stems are slender and trailing. The leaves are light green and narrow. They are 5 cm long. The flowers are very small. The fruit are small round red berries.
Canna indica - Indian Shot
Edible Portion: Fruit, Root, Rhizome, Tubers, Vegetable, Flowers
A broad leafed plant with purple leaf sheaths. It is about 1.5 to 2.5 m high. It grows as a perennial. The stems are in clusters. The leaves are large and smooth. They are dark green but can be reddish in some varieties. The leaf base forms a sheath around the stem. The flowers are red and produced at the top of the plant. The petals are small and red and 4-10 mm wide. The fruit is a 3 celled capsule with black seeds. Underground it has a much branched root or rhizome with fattened sections covered with leaf scars. These are often light red on the outside and yellowish white inside. A clump of 15-20 suckers often develops. These starchy tubers are from 6 cm across to 15 cm long. The shape varies. The seeds are black and hard. They are 5-7 mm across.
Cordeauxia edulis - Yeheb Nut
Edible Portion: Seeds, Leaves
A small evergreen shrub. It has many stems. It grows to about 1.6 m tall but can grow to 2.5 m tall in good growing conditions. It has a long tap root. The leaves are 3-5 cm long. They are divided into 4 pairs of leaflets. The leaflets are oval and leathery. They are 1-2.5 cm long and 1-1.4 cm wide. The flowers have both sexes and are carried in clusters at the ends of branches. They are bright yellow and 2.5 cm across. The pods are 4-6 cm long and curved with a beak. The pods are leathery and slightly flattened. The pods contain 1-4 seeds. The seeds are round and about 12 mm across.
Dioscorea alata - Greater Yam
Edible Portion: Tubers, Root, Vegetable, Bulbils
A yam with a long angular vine. It can climb 15 m high. The stems are square and twine to the right around support sticks. The stem does not have spines. It is often coloured green or purple. The leaves are heart shaped and borne in pairs along the vine. The leaves vary is shape, size and colour with different varieties. Leaves can be 10-30 cm long by 5-20 cm wide. The leaf stalk is 6-12 cm long. The flowers occur in the axils of the upper leaves. The male flowers are in small heads along branched stalks. These can be 25 cm long and green. The female flowers are in shorter spikes. Many cultivated varieties do not produce fertile seed. The fruit are 3-winged and 2.5 cm long by 3.5 cm wide. The seeds when they occur have wings right around them. One large but often irregular shaped tuber occurs under the ground. A very large number of different varieties occur. The tubers can vary in shape, size, colour, texture and other ways. Some varieties produce bulbils along the vine. Plants can vary in number of chromosomes.
Dioscorea bulbifera - Potato Yam
Edible Portion: Tuber, Root, Bulbils, Vegetable
A yam with a long smooth stemmed vine, round in cross section. It winds to the left. It does not have spines. The vine can climb up into trees and grow to long lengths. The leaves are large and round. They are pointed at the tip and round at the base. About 7 veins arise from the tip of the leaf stalk. Leaves can be 14-30 cm across and slightly longer than wide. This yam produces bulbils (potatoes) in the angles of the leaves along the vine. These are often flattened and can be grey brown or purple. Under the ground it has a smaller tuber normally covered with roots. The flowers are large. The male flowers are in spikes up to 20 cm long. The female spikes are usually in pairs. The fruit are winged and about 2.5 cm long by 1.5 cm across. The seeds have wings. The bulbils normally have few fibres through the tissue compared to some yams tubers. The flesh of many varieties is yellow.
Dolichos trilobus - Japanese Arrowroot
Edible Portion: Tubers, Roots, Seeds
A bean plant. It is a twining herb. It keeps growing from year to year from root tubers. The leaves are compound with 3 leaflets. The leaf stalks are 2-3 cm long. The leaflets are 4 sided and 2-6 cm long by 2-5 cm wide. The flowering shoots are in the axils of leaves and there are 1-4 flowers in a group. The fruit is a pod 6 cm long by 8 mm wide. It is slightly curved. There are 6-7 seeds.
Eleusine coracana - Finger Millet
Edible Portion: Shoots, Seeds, Cereal, Vegetable
A millet grass. It is an annual grass. It is robust and forms many tillers or young shoots from the base. It grows 40-120 cm tall. The stems are somewhat flattened. The leaves are narrow. The flower heads are made up of 2-7 finger like spikes. These spikes are 1.5 cm across and 10-15 cm long. These in turn have about 70 smaller spikes. Each one of these smaller spikes has 4-7 seeds. The seeds can be 1-2 mm across. The seeds are roughly rounded. The colour varies. There are coracana and africana subsp.
Eragrostis tef - Teff
Edible Portion: Seeds, Cereal
A millet grass. It is an annual tufted grass. It grows 60-120 cm tall. It has a slender stem and long narrow smooth leaves. The flowers occur in loose open panicles. These are 15-35 cm long. The branches are very thin and droop over. The seeds are very small. They are 1-1.5 mm long. There are about 2500-3000 seeds per gram. A brown seeded and a white seeded kind are recognised.
Gossypium herbaceum - Short-Stable Cotton
Edible Portion: Seeds, Leaves, Oil
A shrub. It grows 2 m high. The leaf stalk is 2.5-8 cm long. The leaf blade is divided into 5 lobes like the fingers on a hand. The leaves are 5-10 cm across. The lobes are broad and oval and half the length of the leaf. The flowers occur singly in the axils of the leaves. The flowers are yellow and red or purple at the centre. The fruit is a capsule with 3-4 valves. It is about 3 cm across. The seeds are about 1 cm across. They are white and woolly.
Oryza sativa - Rice
Edible Portion: Seeds, Cereal, Husks - Oil
An annual grass with hollow stems. The stems can be 30 cm to 150 cm tall. (Floating varieties can be 5 m long.) The nodes are solid and swollen. The stem is protected by a skin layer which can often be high in silicon. A clump of shoots are produced as tillers from buds in the lower leaf axils. The leaves are narrow and hairy. They taper towards the tip. Each stem produces 10 -20 leaves and the seeds hang from the flower stalk at the top. Some varieties are glutinous and cling together when cooked.
