agriculture Article Underutilised Indigenous Vegetables for Household Dietary Diversity in Southwest Nigeria Victoria Adeyemi Tanimonure 1, *, Diego Naziri 2 , Samuel Nii Ardey Codjoe 3 and Adeolu Babatunde Ayanwale 1   Citation: Tanimonure, V.A.; Naziri, D.; Codjoe, S.N.A.; Ayanwale, A.B. Underutilised Indigenous Vegetables for Household Dietary Diversity in Southwest Nigeria. Agriculture 2021, 11, 1064. https://doi.org/10.3390/ agriculture11111064 Academic Editors: David Oscar Yawson and Sanzidur Rahman Received: 24 May 2021 Accepted: 3 September 2021 Published: 28 October 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Agricultural Economics, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife 220282, Nigeria; aayanwa@yahoo.co.uk 2 International Potato Center, Hanoi, Vietnam and Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, Chatham ME4 4TB, UK; D.Naziri@greenwich.ac.uk 3 Regional Institute of Population Studies, Legon Campus, University of Ghana, Accra 0302, Ghana; scodjoe@ug.edu.gh * Correspondence: tanimonurevic@oauife.edu.ng Abstract: The diets of many households in developing countries are monotonous and starch-based. Integrating underutilised indigenous vegetables (UIVs) to cropping systems can contribute to both crop and dietary diversities, thereby improving rural households’ nutrition and boosting food security. Therefore, this study established a link between the UIVs’ diversity and the household dietary diversity (HDD) of the UIVs producers in the rural area of Southwest Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to select 191 UIV-producing households in the region. Their HDD was measured based on the 12 unique food groups consumed by households over a 7-day reference period preceding the survey, and negative binomial Poisson regression analysis was used to determine the relationship between UIV diversities, other sociodemographic characteristics, and the HDD score of the UIV-producing households in the area. The results showed that only about four groups of food contributed greatly to the HDD score. The result of the negative binomial Poisson regression analysis showed UIVs diversity as a significant variable that increased the HDD score in the study area. Other factors that determined the HDD score of UIV-producing households were the marital status of the household head, farm distance from the home, UIVs land area, off-farm income, UIVs gross margin, per capita food expenditure, and Oyo location. The study concluded that the inclusion of diverse underutilised indigenous vegetables into cropping systems in rural areas and vegetable home gardening practices in the rural and urban areas of developing countries could alleviate the challenge of nutrition insecurity. Keywords: underutilised indigenous vegetables; vegetable diversity; household dietary diversity; rural areas 1. Introduction There are links between the promotion of diversity in food crops, indigenous vegeta- bles, and optimum nutritional status [1]. Households with high agricultural production diversity are likely to have a high household dietary diversity score (HDDS), and this is likely to impact positively on their nutrition security [2]. However, researchers still advocate for more research to be done to better understand the role that agro-biodiversity plays on nutrition and dietary outcomes [1]. Meanwhile, it is unfortunate that food production approaches to date have culminated in increasing dependence on a small number of crops. This has been linked to poorer nutrition, especially in developing countries [3–5], where the household food demand pattern is monotonous and mainly dependent on a handful of starch-based foods like yam, cassava, maize, and rice, which are believed to be cheaper compared with micronutrient- dense foods. Less demand is usually placed on micronutrient-based food sources like Agriculture 2021, 11, 1064. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11111064 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agriculture