Resumo

GUZMAN-MALDONADO, Salvador Horacio; ZAMARRIPA-COLMENARES, Alfredo  e  HERNANDEZ-DURAN, Lesly Guadalupe. Nutraceutical and nutritional quality of moringa leaf from trees of different height. Rev. Mex. Cienc. Agríc [online]. 2015, vol.6, n.2, pp.317-330. ISSN 2007-0934.

Moringa has been recently introduced in Guanajuato; however, the trees do not grow evenly, there are differences of up to 225 cm. The objective was to evaluate the nutritional and nutraceutical quality of leaf from trees of different sizes. The leaves were harvested in April 2013 in the newly-introduced garden by INIFAP in Celaya, Guanajuato. Nutritional quality for its chemical composition and content of calcium and iron and functional quality for vitamin C content, phenolic compounds and antioxidant capacity were determined. The protein content of the leaves from trees of 100 cm was higher (24.7%) than trees of 25 (21.1%) and 250 cm (22.3%), and lower than the commercial sample from Oaxaca (29.3%). One hundred grams of leaf from trees of 25, 100 and 250 cm can contribute with 107, 91.7 and 74% of the daily requirement of vitamin C. Moringa leaf of the tree is a better source of calcium and iron, vitamin C, phenols, tannins than the commercial samples. The same applies for antioxidant capacity. Moringa leafhas better nutraceutical properties than parsley, oregano, thyme and epazote. These results show the lack of uniformity in preparing commercial mixtures and appropriate management can achieve better quality of moringa leaf for commercial purposes. This is the first report on the quality of leaf from Mexican materials of moringa.

Palavras-chave : antioxidant; leaf quality; moringa; nutritional; phenolic compound.

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