The world is eating a smaller variety of vegetables as diets become increasingly uniform, reports contributor Sharmila Vaidyanathan for Mongabay India. In India, Indigenous crops such as the clove bean and the Yerengere white long eggplant have largely vanished from commercial markets as hybrid varieties dominate supply chains. Prabhakar Rao, a natural farmer and founder of Hariyalee Seeds in Bengaluru, conserves hundreds of heirloom seed varieties to prevent their extinction. “People are all eating the same few vegetables, and the loss of vegetable biodiversity has not received a lot of attention,” Rao said. “Sadly, this loss is happening under the radar.” Recent research has confirmed this loss of vegetable diversity is global. In a paper published in PNAS in July, researchers compiled a list of 1,482 vegetable species in a new global data set, though they note the true number of local and wild varieties is substantially higher. Many wild vegetable varieties are threatened, they write: approximately 24% of the wild relatives of 79 major vegetable species are currently at risk of extinction. “A major consideration that prompted this article is that many of the vegetable species are not conserved in national and international gene banks,” said lead author Maarten van Zonneveld, head of the gene bank at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru. “There are so many vegetables that need to be rescued before they completely disappear. And the end goal is not just conservation, but also ensuring that this diversity is utilised.” Some reasons for the eroding…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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