Amaranthus: a crop to rediscover

Mother Nature supplies human kind with a wide array of edible species, although humans do not take advantage of all of them. Grains make up more than 80% of the world food supply, and unfortunately it has been reported that per capita grain production has been declining for the past 23 years. This suggests that an increasing amount of agricultural resources will be required to satisfy human nutritional needs. The studying of ancient population eating patterns and habits demonstrated that a large number of crops have been abandoned since centuries no matter if they were a simple growing valid source of high nutritional food and high biological compounds. One of these ancient crops is Amaranth. Due to its agronomic and nutritional properties as well as its richness in bioactive compounds, this crop could represent an interesting option in order to increase alternative source of protein with high biological value, good quality starch, gluten-free products and squalene. The objective of this paper is to describe amaranth main botanical, physical and nutritional properties to illustrate amaranth potentialities in the food and no food sector