Central Myanmar is located in the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot, and the Bamar people are the main ethnic group, which settled there over 1000 years ago. Despite being the core region of the country, central Myanmar has been ignored in previous ethnobotanical studies. Local healthy foods and knowledge are regarded as treasures for resource development and pharmaceutical drug discovery, and market surveys are a good strategy in ethnobotanical research. Thus, we collected and documented typical vegetables and local knowledge in local markets and then analysed the diversity and local knowledge of these vegetables. Observations and interviews were used in the field study, and 10 markets and fairs were selected in central Myanmar. A total of 277 vegetable stalls or shops were visited. We compared the local knowledge we collected with selected important and typical herbal books on traditional Myanmar medicine. Quantitative analysis, including frequency of citation (FC), relative frequency of citation (RFC) and use value (UV), was used to assess the diversity and local knowledge of these vegetables. A total of 132 plant taxa from 47 botanical families and 116 genera were collected. Most (106 taxa, 80.3%) of these vegetables were cited by the informants as functional foods that had health benefits, while others were regarded as merely “good for health”. The main health function of the vegetables was treating digestive problems. Sixty-four species were recorded in selected herbal books on traditional Myanmar medicine, and forty-seven taxa were not recorded in these books but were nonetheless used as healthy vegetables by local people. Twenty-eight species of vegetables were collected from wild places. The diversity and local knowledge of healthy vegetables in central Myanmar were rich. Nevertheless, the diversity of wild vegetables was seemingly relatively low. The possible reason was that we counted only the vegetables that were from entirely wild sources as “wild vegetables”. The most frequently cited vegetables were commonly cultivated species, which reflects the fact that plants cultivated on a large scale comprise the major source of vegetables. Some lesser known vegetables could reflect the unique food culture of local people, but most of these were cited only a few times by the interviewees, which caused low UV and RFC rankings for them in the league table. In addition, future research should pay more attention to the food safety of these vegetables.

中文翻译：

---

日常美食的健康秘诀：缅甸中部当地市场的典型健康蔬菜


缅甸中部地处印缅生物多样性热点地区，缅族是主要民族，1000多年前就在此定居。尽管缅甸中部是该国的核心地区，但在之前的民族植物学研究中却被忽视了。当地的健康食品和知识被视为资源开发和药物发现的宝藏，市场调查是民族植物学研究的一个很好的策略。因此，我们收集并记录了当地市场的典型蔬菜和当地知识，然后分析了这些蔬菜的多样性和当地知识。实地研究采用观察和访谈的方式，在缅甸中部选取了10个市场和集市。共走访了277个菜摊或商店。我们将收集的当地知识与精选的重要且典型的缅甸传统草药书籍进行比较。定量分析，包括引用频率（FC）、相对引用频率（RFC）和使用价值（UV），用于评估这些蔬菜的多样性和当地知识。共收集47个植物科116属132个植物类群。这些蔬菜中的大多数（106个分类单元，80.3%）被受访者称为对健康有益的功能性食品，而其他蔬菜则被认为仅仅是“有益健康”。蔬菜的主要保健功能是治疗消化问题。缅甸传统医学精选草药书籍中记载了 64 种植物，其中 47 种未记录在册但仍被当地人用作健康蔬菜的类群。从野外采集了二十八种蔬菜。 缅甸中部健康蔬菜的多样性和当地知识非常丰富。然而，野菜的多样性似乎相对较低。可能的原因是我们只把完全来自野生的蔬菜算作“野菜”。最常被提及的蔬菜是常见栽培品种，这反映出大规模栽培的植物是蔬菜的主要来源。一些鲜为人知的蔬菜可以反映当地人独特的饮食文化，但大多数受访者只引用过几次，这导致它们在排行榜上的UV和RFC排名较低。此外，未来的研究应该更加关注这些蔬菜的食品安全。