Food plants nonconvential from the peri-urban zone of Coatepec, Veracruz

Abstract

Among the natural resources that man has used, there are nonconventional food plants ((NCEP), that is to say those plants that are not cultivated or marketed in large quantity, are suitable to the local environment facilitating their cultivation and even can be forgotten plants. The use of which is being wasted as traditional knowledge about the use of the primary vegetation is being lost. Faced with this situation was raised as the objective of this work to document the traditional knowledge on the NCEP in a peri-urban area (Coatepec, Veracruz), which seeks to maintain the rational use of this biological resource.  Initially,  to  collect  information,  key  informants  were  identified  and  semi-structured interviews were applied; subsequently, surveys were conducted on the population of the study area to determine the degree of knowledge they had on these plants. We recorded 34 species of NCEP, distributed in 22 families, the most representative being the family Solanaceae with seven species and Asteraceae with four. People agree that these types of plants are of great importance because they were and in some cases remain part of their food, it is recognized that traditional knowledge and use of them is protected in older people, so it is important rescuing these knowledge and above all share them with younger generations to continue taking advantage and not lose their use.