International Journal of Horticulture, 2017, Vol.7, No. 24, 219-228
219
Research Article Open Access
Development of Vegetable Nutrition Garden Model for Diet Diversification and
Improved Nutrition Security of Urban and Peri-urban Households
S.K. Jindal
, M.S. Dhaliwal
Department of Vegetable Science, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, India
Corresponding email
International Journal of Horticulture, 2017, Vol. 7, No. 24 doi
Received: 25 Aug., 2017
Accepted: 01 Sep., 2017
Published: 29 Sep., 2017
Copyright
©2017 Jindal and Dhaliwal, This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article
:
Jindal S.K., and Dhaliwal M.S., 2017, Development of vegetable nutrition garden model for diet diversification and improved nutrition security of urban and
peri-urban households, International Journal of Horticulture, 7(24): 219-228 (doi
Abstract
Vegetables help combat malnutrition and diversify diets. Dietary diversification balances the diet by enhancing supply of
essential micro-nutrients leading to improved health, enhanced thinking ability and increased efficiency. Improved vegetable
nutrition garden is better than traditional homestead vegetable garden. The improved model involves many crops that can be
repeatedly harvested to meet a family’s vegetable needs throughout the year. The crops and their varieties are scientifically selected
to be highly nutritious with few pest and disease problems. The suggested model can produce 300 kg of vegetables annually,
sufficient to meet vitamins and minerals requirement of a family comprising four members.
Keywords
Household nutrition; Nutritional garden model; Vegetables
1 Introduction
Food security is a global a complex issue and remains a major challenge for developing countries. Food security
is multidimensional and is presumed exists when is adequate and continuous food availability, access, and
utilization in a sustainable manner. Several studies suggest that home gardens can be an option for food and
nutritional security in disaster, conflict, and other post crisis situations (Marsh, 1998; Wanasundera, 2006;
Galhena et al., 2013). Therefore, more attention towards home gardening as a strategy to enhance household food
security and nutrition is to be needed. Globally, nutrition gardening contributes to household food security by
providing direct access to food that can be harvested, prepared and fed to family members, often on a daily basis.
Even very poor, landless or near landless people practice gardening on small patches of homestead land, vacant
lots, roadsides or edges of a field, simple hydroponics, or in containers. Gardening may be done with virtually no
economic resources, using locally available planting materials, green manures, “live” fencing and indigenous
methods of pest control. Thus, home gardening at some level is a production system that the poor can easily enter.
Gardening provides a diversity of fresh foods that improve the quantity and quality of nutrients available to the
family (Marsh, 1998). Nutrition gardening is especially important in rural areas where people have limited
income-earning opportunities and poor access to markets. These gardens are also becoming an increasingly
important source of food and income for poor households in peri-urban and urban areas (Christanty, 1990; Marsh,
1998; Shackleton et al., 2008). Nutrition gardening can be a profitable proposition in a country like India which is
predominantly vegetarian and, as such, a large number of nutrients are obtained from vegetables for a balanced
diet. Due to inadequate consumption of vegetables, deficiency of micro-nutrients especially of iron, vitamin A
and iodine are prevalent in the developing world (Hall et al., 2009; Kanungsukkasem et al., 2009;
Satheannoppakao et al., 2009; Leenders et al., 2013; NCCDPHP, 2013). The challenge of increasing vegetables
consumption is a major concern for health professionals. An estimated 6.7 million deaths worldwide were
attributed to inadequate fruit and vegetable consumption in 2010 (Lim et al., 2012). Further, the vegetables
reaching the market contain high amount of pesticide residues, it is of special interest to the consumers to grow
their own vegetables for domestic consumption. Application of pesticides for insect-pest and disease management
is discouraged in the nutrition gardens. Vegetables help combat malnutrition and diversify diets. Dietary
diversification balances the diet by enhancing the supply of essential micro-nutrients leading to improved health,
