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The following points highlight the five main groups of food plants in India. The groups are: 1. Cereals 2. Millets 3. Legumes and Nuts 4. Vegetables 5. Fruits.
Food Plants: Group # 1. Cereals:
The cereals are the most important sources of plant food for man. They constitute the most important group in the food plants of India. The cereals are the members of family Gramineac. There are six true cereals rice, wheat, maize, barley, oat and rye. They contain a high percentage of carbohydrates, together with a considerable amount of proteins and some fats. Even vitamins are present.
Food Plants: Group # 2. Millets:
They are also known as small grains. They are considered to have been cultivated in India from prehistoric times. Some of the commonly grown millets in India are sorghum, pearl millet and finger millet.
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Food Plants: Group # 3. Legumes and Nuts:
The legumes or pulses are next in importance to cereals as sources of food. They belong to the family Leguminosae. They contain more protein material than any other vegetable products. Carbohydrates and fats are also present in the legumes.
The pulses form an important item in India where the majority of the population consists of vegetarians. The important Indian pulses are gram, black gram, green gram, pea, pigeon pea, lentil, etc.
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Nuts- A nut is a one-celled, one-seeded dry fruit with a hard pericarp. Only a few nuts of commerce fulfil this description, e.g., chestnut. The others included among nuts may be peanuts, almonds, coconuts, cashew-nuts, walnuts, pistachio nuts, etc. These “so called” nuts make a valuable food material. The food value is due to a high protein and fat content.
Food Plants: Group # 4. Vegetables:
The term vegetable is usually applied to edible plants which store up reserve food in roots, stems, leaves and fruits and which are eaten cooked, or raw as salad. The vegetables rank next to cereals as sources of carbohydrate food. The nutritive value of vegetables is tremendous, because of the presence of indispensable mineral salts and vitamins.
Food Plants: Group # 5. Fruits:
Morphologically a fruit is the seed-bearing portion of the plant, and consists of the ripenea ovary and its contents. Simple fruits are derived from a single ovary, and compound fruits from more than one. The aggregate fruits are formed from numerous carpels of the same flower, while composite fruits develop from ovaries of different flowers.
In economic botany only those fruits are considered which are usually eaten without cooking. For convenience the fruits have been divided into two groups tropical fruits (e.g., mango, citrus fruits, litchi, banana, guava, sugar apple, fig, papaya, pine-apple, etc.) and temperate fruits (e.g., apple, pear, plum, peach, strawberries, grape, etc.).
