Abstract

Food is the fundamental requiremnt for human existence and food security occupies central place for ensuring social peace and stability. Globally, more than one-third of human beings are confronted to severe form of malnutrition, while only one-third of human populace enjoys food and nutritional security. In South Asia, majority of the populace has meager access to required nutrtion and resultantly malnutrtion continues to remain rampant. On economic dimension, the prices of non-staple food commodities including various pulses and vegetables have skyrocketed compared to grains. Furthermore, the use of healthy diets has declined sharply owing to deteriorated quality of agricultural produces caused by global warming and climate change. These circumstances have created hidden hunger and the available diets could not meet dietry requirement leading to the unhamperd risk of physical as well as mental impairment. Malnutrition has emerged as one of the most serious challenge but has not been ddressed keeping in view the socioeconomic perspectives of diversified communties. In such a gloomy scenario, only indiginious plants resources have the potential to offer biologically as well as ecnomically viable solutions to address malnutrtion and hunger. The region of Azad Kashmir is bestowed with rich agro-biodiversity, while the indigenous fruits are quite nutritious and may offer multiple health benefits leading to devising a multi-pronge nutrional security strategies. A variety of value added fruits products can be developed from these indigenous fruits as these fruitss are available throughout the season. These indigenous fruits have the potential to serve as rich source of nutrition especially in the wake of climate change and economic crunch. They provide essentail nutrients such as antioxidents (carotenoids, ascorbic acid, phenolic, anthocyanin and flavonoids), vitamins and micronutrients (iron, calcium, zinc and copper and phosphorus) for maintaining health. In this context, the study aimed to scrutinize the nutrtiotional status of indigenous plant sources found at varying altitudes. In addition, the development of various market-oriented value-added products from these plants sources has also been emphasized.