A Review on Cultivation, Nutritional, Phytochemical and Ethnopharmacological Characteristics of Moringa Oleifera

Abstract

Moringa oleifera Lam. (referred as Moringa) gained a lot of interest in last decade from a seasonal vegetable to ethnopharmacological plant which was traditionally used for nutritional requirement. Scientifically Moringa oleifera belongs to family Moringaceae. Flowers, Leaves, pods and Seeds of Moringa oleifera plant has been used as functional food. Articles were searched by using a key word of moringa oleifera on google scholar and all articles were cited which are published in last 10 years and recently in 2024. Water, temperature, humidity and fertilizers play a significant role in the cultivation of the plant. Phytoconstituents are reported into the categories including proteins and amino acids, carotenoids, alkaloids, phenolic acid, glucosinolate, flavonoids, sterols, terpenes, saponins and tannins, fatty acids, glycosides and polysaccharides. Moringa Oleifera plant for phytoconstituents was widely searched between 2010 and 2023 leading to the exploration of more than 90 phytoconstituents. Pharmacological properties range from antimicrobial to cytoxic activities which increase the significance of this nutritional plant to medicinal plant. Toxicity validation data show that plant has safe at the dose of 2000 mg/kg. An ample amount of experimental based data is collected, it is right time to move forward for clinical trial studies by formulation of most active parts of the plant. Separation of active phytoconstituents for specific disease and dosage formulation of particular phytoconstituents should be target for pharmaceutical industry. Secondly, nutritional homeopathic formulation can be used chronically to treat various diseases related to pain, gastrointestinal tract and metabolic disorders like diabetes which will lessen the health burden on population.