Table 2. Broader nutritional benefits of indigenous and traditional foods crops (IFTCs).

Broader Nutritional benefits of ITFCs
Description	Findings	Location of Study	Reference
Source of gluten-free flour	An example of this is Eragrostis curvula, Amaranth, Cassava	Eritrea and Ethiopia	[73–75]
Some ITFCs are important sources of water	Especially during dry months and places with a lack of surface water	Sub-Saharan Africa	[7]
ITFCs improve body functions and have nutraceutical effects	Drug metabolism, stimulation of the immune system, and boosting tissue generation, lowers the frequency of diet-related diseases, ITFCs have bioactive compounds and contribute to antioxidant activity	South Africa	[8,59,76]
ITFCs have the potential to be applied with various technologies to deliver probiotics	Probiotics, which are live microorganisms conferring health benefits to the host when consumed in adequate amounts	Southern Africa	[77]
Once-off increased cost of crop diversification of ITFCs would be significant	Beneficial in comparison to supplementation (drug treatment) and fortification	Africa	[10]
ITFCs in conjunction with new farming techniques create stronger food production systems	Increased accessibility in combination with indigenous knowledge of nutritional properties, may lead to improved food security	South Africa, Chad	[78,79]
Potential anti-bacterial products	Could theoretically be exploited in the search for novel antibiotics	Africa	[55,80]