Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) - nutritive and health promoting crop of tribal people: strategies for revival in the face of extinction in Ladakh

Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) is one of the important unattended crops cultivated in the pockets of the high altitude cold arid zones of Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir. Buckwheat was one of the staple, balanced and important foods of Ladakhi people a few decades back. A most popular food item which was made from this buckwheat flour in arid zones is known as kiseer or giziri, which resembles to plain dosa. The crop is economically healthy and important primarily due to its high quality proteins and carbohydrate rich in their seeds, hardiness of plants, short season span and also their foliage being used as a green vegetable. Buckwheat is introduced into the diet as an alternative crop of renewed interest due to its nutritive and health- promoting value. Experiments with animal models have demonstrated that buckwheat flour may alleviate diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia. A number of nutraceutical compounds exist in buckwheat grains and other tissues. These are a rich source of starch, proteins, antioxidants, and dietary fibre as well as trace elements. Buckwheat is also used for livestock and poultry as forage and feed. Buckwheat protein quality is high due to high proportion of most essential amino acids specially lysine, tryptophan and threonine; besides buckwheat contains a high content of albumins and globulins and to some extent of prolamins. But unfortunately now the situation of such nutritious crops is at the verge of extinction though it is of high medicinal and nutritive value. Reason behind this is unattended importance of research scientist, lack of high yielding variety and also because climatic change that directly affects its cultivation. Farmers give preference to cultivate fodder crops and other food crops which give high returns as compared to buck wheat. Further, the area under buckwheat in Ladakh has also drastically reduced. Keeping in view the nutritional quality of its grains for human consumption and suitability of this crop for marginal and degraded lands, there is a need to revive its cultivation in cold arid conditions of Ladakh (Jammu and Kashmir). Therefore, there is an urgent need of exploiting new research technologies to boost grain yields viz., proper sowing time because of early winter and also with desirable quality parameters and increasing the nutritional value of the crop for human consumption as well as feed for cattle population under cold arid conditions of Ladakh. Here we review the health benefits, breeding objectives and future strategies of this un-attended and unexploited crop in cold arid conditions of Ladakh.