Vegetable growing is one of the major enterprises of horticulture and is becoming increasingly popular owing to a greater appreciation of their food value. People are consuming more fresh vegetables today than ever before. They are an important part of the diet of millions of people all over the world, more particularly in the tropics. Although not major sources of energy, they provide much-needed vitamins and minerals. Like fruits, vegetables provide variety, flavour and zest to the diet, making meals more appetising.Their importance has increased because they produce a maximum quantity of food for the area planted, and they grow quickly. Meals would be far dreary to most vegetarian palates, were it not for the wide choice of vegetables and fruits.

Although many vegetable crops are of local importance, some are of world-wide importance. Widespread trade in vegetables is a recent innovation. The phenomenal growth of the vegetable industry since World War II has been due to greatly improved production, handling and transporting techniques.Today, wide varieties of fresh and processed vegetables from distant markets are available in all the great cities at all times of the years. Processed vegetables in the form of canned, frozen, dehydrated and pickled products are also available everywhere.

Although it has been used for a long time, no satisfactory definition for the word ‘vegetable’ has been devised. In a popular sense, the term vegetable applies to those plants or plant parts that are usually eaten with the main course of a meal and are commonly salted and boiled or used for dessert and salads.Thus, although botanically fruits, tomato, pepper, okra, eggplant, cucumber and squash are traditionally regarded as vegetables. Rhubarb, botanically a petiole, is commonly served as a dessert, like fruit. Squash is used as a fruit in pies.

The food value of vegetables, especially leafy and fruit vegetables is low because of the large amount of water. Root crops, however, contain large amounts of carbohydrates but are poor in proteins and oils, and rank next to cereals as a source of a carbohydrate food. Grain legumes differ from other vegetables owing to the large amount of proteins they contain and are familiarly known as ‘poor man's meat’. Soya beans and groundnuts are a valuable article of human diet, being rich sources of oil as well as proteins.