Abstract:
The people of the world and most rural communities in our country rely on wild edible plants
(WEPs) through food shortage and traditional medicine. An ethnobotanical study of WEPs was
conducted in Dedo district, Jimma Zone, Oromia Regional State, Southwest Ethiopia. The
objective of the study was to assess WEPs and related indigenous knowledge of the local people.
Three Ganda (the smallest administrative unit) were purposively selected for the data collection
from the study area and 344 informants were selected randomly from 2474 households by using
simple random sampling. The size of the sample population for each Ganda was decided using
the sample size determination of Yamane’s (1967) formula. Ethnobotanical data were collected
using a semi-structured interview, guided field walk, focus group discussion, and market survey.
The data was analyzed using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, preference ranking, direct matrix
ranking, paired comparison. In total, 30 WEP species belonging to 26 genera and 21 families
were identified and recorded from the study area. Moraceae and Myrtaceae families were
relatively the most frequent in terms of the number of WEPs species represented by four and
three species each followed by Boraginaceae, Rutaceae, Solanaceae, Sapotaceae, and Oleaceae
which contributed two species each. The collections of this WEP species were dominated mainly
by children. Regarding their mode of consumption, the majority (96.67%) of WEP species were
consumed as raw by the local communities. Trees were the highest growth forms (53.33%) and
fruits were mostly edible plant parts of the WEPs in the study area. The study showed that
agricultural expansion was identified as a major threat to WEPs followed by timber making,
construction, firewood, and fence in the study area. Hence, the conservation of WEPs species as
well as protecting indigenous knowledge were the basic critical issues.
