Momordica Diocia: underutilized but potential crop

Momordica dioica is a perennial, dioecious, cucurbitaceous climbing creeper (commonly known as kakrol, spiny gourd or teasle gourd or Chatela in Nepali) (Talukdar and Hossain) and in some parts of eastern Nepal. its wild form are typically smaller in size and with very few spines as compared to domesticated species. The use of domesticated species and their cultivation is very rare but is done in home gardens for their household consumption.

While doing a research in home garden by myself, I reported that it has been used and consumed in very low amount and not all of the respondents were aware of its domestication. Among reported 109 sp. it is also one of them (Thapa and Rawal), It is widely used for its medicinal purposes too, though people prefer for its pickle and vegetable and sometimes even cook with meat.

This is also one of the hardy plant resistant to variety of diseases and biotic and abiotic stress too. Our present survey was conducted to identify high value and under-utilized crops in our study area where with few other species Momordica is also one of the important crops.

Medicinal value

According to Ayurveda, not only its fruits have diuretic, laxative, hepato-protective, antivenomous, antihy- pertensive, anti-inflammatory, antiasthmatic, antipyretic, antileprosy, antidiabetic, and antidepressant properties but also itsleaveshaveantihelminthic, aphrodisiac, antihemor- roidal, hepatoprotective, antibronchitic, antipyretic, antiasth- matic, and analgesic properties (Talukdar and Hossain; Bawara et al.).

The use and preservation of momordica is not yet taken in consideration thus furthermore, our work is concerned to analyzing its landraces and categorizing its yield and yield component and descriptive ranking for further evaluation. It is also regarded as one of the highly adaptable crop to climate change and ecological system change. Thus, more focus to its commercialization is yet to be done and for domestication.

All of the contents presented here is a part of our project “ACCESSING THE HOMEGARDEN OF ITAHARI, NEPAL”.

The findings present in this article is primary fining of our research project of second step yet to be published. First part is published.

References

ADDIN Mendeley Bibliography CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Bawara, Bhavana, et al. “Phyto-Pharmacology of Momordica Dioica Roxb. Ex. Willd: A Review.” International Journal of Phytomedicine, vol. 2, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1–9, doi:10.5138/ijpm.2010.0975.0185.02001.

Talukdar, Sattya Narayan, and Mohammad Nazir Hossain. Study of Momordica Dioica. Vol. 2014, 2014.

Thapa, Sandesh, and Sara Rawal. “ACCESSING THE STATUS OF HOMEGARDEN AND ITS FUNCTIONAL Environment & Ecosystem Science ( EES ) ACCESSING THE STATUS OF HOMEGARDEN AND ITS FUNCTIONAL CATEGORY IN ITAHARI SUB-METROPOLITAN MUNICIPALITY , NEPAL.” Environment and Ecosystem Science, vol. 4, no. 2, 2020, pp. 60–66, doi:10.26480/ees.02.2020.60.66.