Importance of Underutilized Fruits and Nuts

Abstract

The plant wealth of nature is abundant with fruits and nuts which are widely utilized and exploited as supplementary food sources and also for industrial products as well as for extracting medicines. Simultaneously, natural plant products have been in use in healthcare as drugs, antioxidants, flavors, fragrances, dyes, and insecticides. Plentiful of underutilized fruits and nuts (UFNs) are there in the plant kingdom and have remained underexploited for a variety of reasons but contributed significantly in food sustainability, as ample sources of important phytochemicals, and have the potentiality for income generation as well as for maintaining the environmental balance. A wide range of products have been processed from these UFNs which include safe-to-eat fruits, grains, leaves, nuts, roots and tubers, fibers, oils, medicines, spices, stimulants, and derived products. In this chapter we present the importance of UFNs, their nutritional benefits, their bioactive compounds, and other biological activities.