Malvaceae spp. leaves as a novel crop for food

Year 2019, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 279 - 286, 23.12.2019

Eyal Ben-simchon Eliezer Sapir Yiftach Vaknin Oren Shelef

Abstract

Local
wild plants are often used as a complementary food source for indigenous
societies around the globe. However, domestication of such plants as new crops
for food is facing serious challenges, so in fact only a handful of new crops
were domesticated for commercial use in the last decades. Several Malva and Lavatera species (Family: Malvaceae) are ruderal, nitrophilic
plants that very commonly dominate vegetation of field margins in Mediterranean
agroecosystems. In Israel, those Malvaceae species - mainly M. nicaeensis All.
and L. cretica L. - are commonly called “Hubeza” (Arabic:
bread). Hubeza have an important role in the local cuisine.
Traditionally, people are harvesting and eating the green leaves fresh, boiled
or fried. The goal of this project is to test the potential of M. nicaeensis and L.cretica as a potential
crop for human food. We hypothesize that the nutritional values of the Hubeza
leaves, as well as biomass production, is competitive to spinach, as well as
other green leaves which are available commercially, and used in similar
fashion. To test our hypothesis we compared here nutritional values of wild Hubeza
leaves to the nutritional values of other green leaves crops, in terms of,
total N, P, K, Fe, Cu, and Na. We found that leaves of wild Malvaceae exhibited
similar concentrations of nutrients as compared to commercial green leaves,
cultivated in the field. Subsequently, we will examine agronomic aspects of M. nicaeensis and L.cretica cultivation, as
well as additional nutritional aspects. The use of native plants for
agriculture can increase biodiversity of agroecosystems, promote
diversification of agriculture, and reduce agricultural inputs. The value of
native plants, local production, and maintenance of agroecosystem biodiversity
can reduce food millage, promote food diversity and agricultural resilience.

Keywords

green leaves, Malva, Lavatera, nutritional value, traditional food, novel crop

Thanks

We thank Joshua Klein and Asher Bar Tal, researchers at the Agricultural Research Organization (ARO) for their assistance.

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