Pippan/Pipun A Delicious Wild Vegetable Dish of Thar Desert Sindh, Pakistan
Common Name: Pippan, Pippa, Pimpa, Pippun
Pippa/Pipun is very famous and delicious wild vegetable of Thar Desert. Within one week after sufficient rainfall, dried roots of pipun grow up fresh green brances.
The fresh green branches of pipun are leafless stem succulent or with very tiny leaves.
It is drought resistant herb, can be found in dry sandy hot Tharparkar arid zone during rainy/monsoon season. It always grows under the bushes, shrubs with bunch of many branches, every bunch grownup with above 25 branches.
Common height of the plant branches are 20 to 30 centimeters some time above to 40 cm, but it depends upon soil moisture and intensity of rain. During the dry season all branches goes dried out and after few days of rains fresh green branches grow up from dried roots.
Pimpa/Pippan/Pippa is an important vegetable herb/plant of the Tharparkar arid zone of Sindh Pakistan.
Local Thari Indigenous peoples traditionally used green branches as vegetable, also peoples eat green branches, which are very tasty.
Issues affecting the Pipun:
- Continuous Droughts
- Low rainfall
- Overgrazing
- Land Use pattern
- Increase in Desertification
