Vegetable diversity is shrinking fast, and few people notice. In a perspective article in PNAS, researchers warn that land-use change, uniform markets and the loss of native and wild species have sharply reduced vegetable biodiversity over the past century, and that about 24% of the wild relatives of 79 major vegetable species are at risk of extinction, Mongabay India reports.
The authors compiled a Global Vegetable Species Dataset listing 1,482 vegetables, a figure they say understates the true number because many local and wild vegetables are missing from standard references. "Many of the vegetable species are not conserved in national and international gene banks," said lead author Maarten van Zonneveld, head of the genebank at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru. The World Vegetable Center's genebank holds more than 65,000 samples of more than 330 species, and India's National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources more than 30,700 vegetable samples.
On a small farm in Bengaluru, Prabhakar Rao, founder of Hariyalee Seeds, still saves the seed of vegetables such as clove beans and the Yerengere white long eggplant, once the only brinjal used for vangi bath. Since 2011 he has saved hundreds of heirloom varieties, which he calls "just scratching the surface". "Sadly, this loss is happening under the radar," he says.
The paper links diversity to nutrition and climate resilience. Many vegetables serve twice, sweet potato and taro for their roots and leaves alike, and Crop Trust's Opportunity Crops Knowledge Base, to which India contributed, lists overlooked crops such as sweet potato, minor yams and pumpkin. Intake is low too: a 2020 study found average fruit and vegetable consumption in India of about 230g a person a day, against a recommended 400g.
Markets work against diversity. Chef and food researcher Elizabeth Yorke of the collective Edible Issues says shoppers have come to expect one look for each vegetable; her Rooting for Tubers project with the Bengaluru farm network Spudnik Farms runs festivals and recipe workshops for tubers that buyers do not know how to cook. Rao says vegetable farming is "a hit or a miss" for small growers whose prices often fail to cover their costs, and a 2025 analysis found India, the world's second-largest vegetable producer, ranks lowest in productivity among the top five.
Colin Khoury, global conservation lead at Crop Trust and a co-author, says vegetables are grown in fields but also in terraces, backyards and rooftops, often by women, the elderly and children, and that supply must be made "available, visible and affordable". School meals are one route: since 2022 the North East Society for Agroecology Support (NESFAS) has run community-led school meals using local vegetables such as red-fleshed sweet potato, taro stems and Indian pennywort in 26 schools in Meghalaya.
Reported by Priyanka Shankar for Mongabay India.
Source: Mongabay India
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