**4. Conservation of traditional African vegetables in Tanzanian rural communities**

Traditional African vegetables and their genetic resources need to be conserved against threats as they have high potential to contribute to healthy diets, climate resilience and food systems in Tanzania. TAVs are highly nutritious, easy to incorporate into crop rotation, and can generate more climate-resilient systems suitable for food production. Therefore, conservation of TAVs will support sustainably on food production, diversification and promote wider range of healthier foods Zonneveld et al. [30] especially in some areas of Sub-Saharan Africa which has some parts with acute nutritional deficiencies and highest level of hidden hunger in the world. Thus, world's sustainable food future depends on the response of plant biodiversity to global changes in climate and environmental impacts, market integration, demographical and nutritional transition and human health and disease Zimmerer and Haan [41] hence the need for integrative approach in conservation of agrobiodiversity. The conflicts between agricultural produce or and biodiversity are by no means inevitable if farming practices are not sustainable [42]. However, until recently relatively little effort on exploration of traditional vegetables as an important component of agricultural biodiversity have been done by researchers both ecologically and socioeconomically, Dinssa et al. [37] acknowledged the fact that farmers in sub-Saharan Africa have been the sole curators and developers of the neglected and underutilized traditional vegetables.
