Uses

ID Crop ID Part Use Category Notes Metadata ID
472 Lesser Yam Tuber Food The tubers are eaten as a starchy staple, after cooking or roasting, and their taste is sweet and pleasant. Flour and starch are also extracted. 7,723
473 Potato Yam Tuber Food The plant is often cultivated in tropical areas, mainly for its edible aerial bulbs. Aerial tubers should be cooked.An agreeable taste, they can be boiled, baked, fried etc. They must be thoroughly cooked in order to destroy toxic alkaloids. Wild forms of the plant are always toxic raw, though selected cultivars have been developed that are much lower, or even free from, the toxins. 7,724
474 Potato Yam Tuber Medicinal Both the tuber and the bulbil of wild races have medicinal uses. n particular they are used externally, usually as a poultice, to treat wounds, sores, boils and inflammations; in dressings for treating dermal parasitic and fungal infections; or crushed, mixed with palm oil, and massaged onto areas of rheumatism, and for troubles of the breasts and for jiggers. In India the tuber is considered to be diuretic and to be a remedy for diarrhoea and haemorrhoids. 7,724
475 Water Yam Tuber Food The tubers and larger bulbils of D. alata are consumed by humans as a starchy staple, after cooking in various ways. 7,734
476 Water Yam Tuber Medicinal D. alata is also used in traditional medicine in Southeastern Asia. 7,734
477 Water Yam Tuber Feed (Forage/Fodder) Tubers and bulbils are also used as an animal feed resource. 7,734
478 Yam (Dioscorea floribunda) Tuber Food The edible root is sometimes gathered from the wild for local use. 7,758
479 Yellow Yam Tuber Food The tuber is used almost exclusively for human consumption. 7,766
480 Yellow Yam Tuber Feed (Forage/Fodder) Only the peels of the tuber are fed to animals. 7,766
481 Asiatic Bitter Yam/Gadung Tuber Food The tuber of D. hispida is the chief famine food of tropical Asia, as is D. dumetorum (Kunth) Pax for Africa. The tuber is poisonous because of a high content of the alkaloid dioscorine. Its preparation for food requires much time and skill and includes slicing, washing the fresh or boiled tuber in several changes of salt water, or in running water, and a final check on whether all poison has been removed. 7,767
482 Asiatic Bitter Yam/Gadung Tuber Industrial Starch extracted from the tubers can be used for culinary or industrial purposes, notably the manufacture of glucose. 7,767
483 Asiatic Bitter Yam/Gadung Tuber Medicinal The pounded tubers are sometimes used externally as an antiseptic, and a decoction is drunk to alleviate chronic rheumatism. 7,767
484 Bush Yam Tuber Food The tuber should be cooked first. Seen mainly as a food for use in times of shortage, usually only the lower portion is eaten, and then only while still young. Prolonged soaking of the tuber is required before it can be eaten, not so much because of any traces of toxicity as because of the woodiness of the tissue. 7,769
485 Bush Yam Leaf Medicinal The leaves are squeezed in water, which is then added to gin and taken as a treatment for jaundice. 7,769
486 Wild Yam Tuber Food The plant is widely cultivated in tropical areas of Asia for its edible root. 7,774
487 Wild Yam Whole Medicinal A decoction of the plant is applied to swellings. 7,774
488 Yams Tuber Food The rural and local people who use them as food supplements make them edible by different traditional practices. 7,779
489 Yams Tuber Medicinal Dioscorea species with nutritive and antioxidant content not only enrich the diet of the local rural and local people but also make them ethnomedicinally important. Tubers of different species of Dioscorea are used for curing various diseases and ailments in different formulations. 7,779
490 Black Kongu Bark Industrial Good source of valuable timber. 7,786
491 Boilam Tree Bark Industrial The timber is used as mersawa. 7,788