Ethnobotanical Study of Wild Edible Plants in Dedo District, Jimma Zone, Oromia National Regional State, Southwest Ethiopia

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.