Journal of Food Processing & Technology

Tropical tuber crops enhance the food and livelihood security in India

International Conference and Exhibition on Food Processing & Technology

November 22-24, 2012 Hyderabad International Convention Centre, India

Amit Kumar Singh, Arvind Kumar Chaurasiya, S. Mitra, Palash Santra and N. Pandia Rana

Posters: J Food Process Technol

Abstract:

The tuber crops (except potato) consist of both dicots like cassava/tapioca (Manihot esculenta), sweet potato (Ipomea batatas), yam bean (Pachyrhizus erosus), winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus) and monocots like yam (Dioscoria spp.), taro (Colocasia esculenta), tannia (Xanthosoma sagittifolia), elephant foot yam (Amorphophallus spp.), arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea) etc. The tropical tuber crops, cassava and sweet potato are the most important in India due to the large area under cultivation and diversity of use. Cassava is cultivated largely in southern peninsular region covering states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and North-eastern states cover an area of 0.23 million ha with a production of 8.06 million tons and having the productivity of 34.75 tons/ha, the highest in the world. These crops have critical roles in play for food security and poverty eradication offering adequate calories and nutrition for around 500 million people of the tropical belt globally. They are locally well adapted to marginal lands and constitute an important part of the local diet, providing valuable nutritional elements (e.g. protein, vitamins, minerals) and spices, often lacking in staple crops. It�s provided the cheapest source of dietary energy in the form of carbohydrates in developing countries and has been generally recognized as �calorie density� crops because of their high starch content. The edible energy production in terms of mega joules/ha/day estimated to be 152 for sweet potato, 121 for cassava and 182 for yams and they are quite comparable with that of rice (151), wheat (135) and maize (159). Their role in traditional medicine is also well known