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A review on entomophagy: Natural food insects for ethnic and tribal communities of North-East India

Entomophagy insects are local food/ feed in most parts of the North Malay Archipelago. These insects are a standard natural resource that provides food and economical safety to most ethnic groups of Eastern Himalayas. Entomophagy not only supports the nutritional food security, but also provides the family livelihood to the tribal populations during difficult times of the year. Since, edible insects are great source of supplemental food item that would meet the people’s present and future need, they’re preferred by tribal communities as eggs, nymphs, larvae, pupa and adults insects, and eaten as fried, cooked, roasted or are even consumed as raw repeatedly. In India, a complete of 245 species, 50 families and 10 orders of edible insects have been recorded so far as food and it’s mostly practiced in eight North Eastern States of India. Among the edible species of insects, biggest consumption is of coleopteran species with 24.69%, followed by Hemiptera (22.63%), Orthoptera (17.28%), Hymanoptera (13.17%), Odonata (10.70%), Lepidoptera (5.35%), Isoptera (2.88%), Dictyoptera (2.06%) and therefore the least were Diptera (0.41%) and Ephimeroptera (0.82%). Study of edible insect in India evolved the uncharted natural resources of north-east region and medicinal, traditional beliefs of tribal people. This review paper discuss about the common edible insects consumed by different ethnic and tribal communities in North-east India.