The miracle tree: Moringa oleifera

Abstract

For thousands of years, moringa (Moringa oleifera) has been used as a food crop and as a medicinal plant. Almost all of moringa’s plant parts have multiple uses, particularly the leaves and seed pods, which are highly nutritious. During the past several decades, more attention has focused on exploring and expanding the multiple uses and benefits of this miracle tree. Advances in research and development are rapidly progressing in the areas of botany and germplasm improvement, agronomy, nutrition, natural medicine, and its commercialization by the food and cosmetics industry. Recent developments are not only focusing on using moringa as a food crop, but also as an industrial commodity, with applications such as water clarification, livestock feed, and biofuel. This book presents much information collected from various sources including field research studies conducted by organizations involved in developing and promoting moringa as one of the most useful plants, articles written by individuals with experience and knowledge about moringa, as well as other books and publications cited in this present edition.

The first edition of the book: "The Miracle Tree - Moringa oleifera: Natural Nutrition for the Tropics" was published in 1999 by the late Lowell J. Fuglie when he was working for the Church World Service relief and development assistance ministry in Africa. In late 2009 before Lowell Fuglie passed away he was planning to update his book "The Miracle Tree: The Multiple Uses of Moringa" which was published in 2001 with support from CTA, Netherlands. He invited several authors to contribute a chapter to the proposed update. It was unfortunate that the updated version of the book was never published or completed before Lowell died. After almost two decades, there has been considerable progress in moringa research and development in response to increasing demand for new information on various topics about moringa. After the two international conferences on moringa in Africa (Tanzania 2001 and Ghana 2006), and one international symposium in the Philippines (2015) there has been considerable new information in R&D addressing the challenges and issues presented and discussed during those conferences. This second edition of the book is a more comprehensive compendium of information on the various aspects of moringa which were not completely covered in the first edition published two decades ago. Most of the information and contents in the first edition are not included in the present edition. The information will be useful for students, researchers, teachers, farmers and the growing moringa industry.