Perennial vegetables: A neglected resource for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and nutrition

Carbon sequestration The carbon sequestration impact of PV adoption under the 12 adoption scenarios as described in the methodology section is shown in Table 3. Total new adoption area of PVs ranges from 4.9–26.4 Mha. Carbon sequestration ranges from 22.7–280.6 MMT CO2-eq/yr in 2050. This figure shows the carbon sequestration impact for each of 12 scenarios based on Mha new adoption of PVs by 2050, the percentage of woody PVs, and sequestration rates. Nutrition In the comparison of PVs widely-grown reference vegetables, our results indicate that many PVs are high in the nutrients required to address widespread nutritional deficiencies, and cer- tain species and subclasses of PVs are especially likely to be high in the key nutrients needed. The full set of data including those used in meta-analysis is included as S1 Data “Perennial Vegetable Nutrient Data” as an Excel spreadsheet. Of 240 PV species, 154 (64%) showed superabundant levels of nutrients (rated “very high” or “extremely high” as defined in Table 2). A full 23 PVs (10%) showed superabundant levels of four or more nutrients. The proportion of crops with superabundant nutrients across plant form and part used in displayed in Fig 4. Proportional levels of superabundant nutrients, espe- cially of multiple nutrients, are most prominent in woody plants with edible leaves. Table 4 shows the species with high levels of nutrients (annual and perennial) with the greatest potential to address traditional malnutrition. These nutrient levels are the results of

Fig 1. Plant form and parts used for cultivated perennial vegetable species. This figure shows the form (woody perennial, perennial vine, or perennial herb) and part consumed as vegetable (leaf, shoot, other vegetative part, flowerbud, flower, fruit, and unripe seed). Note that some species have more than one part consumed as a vegetable and thus are shown more than once. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234611.g001 PLOS ONE Perennial vegetables: A neglected resource for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and nutrition PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234611 July 10, 2020 9 / 19