Abstract

Comparative studies on the amino acid content of different parts of Moringa oleifera plant found in Awka, South-East, Nigeria

Author(s): I.O.Igwilo, F.C.Ezeonu, S.C.Udedi, N.A.Ozumba

The amino acid content of the different parts ofMoringa oleifera plant was estimated using the Technicon sequential Multi-Sample Amino Acid Analyzer (TSM) as described by Speckman et al. The most abundant EAA are leucine, a branched-chain amino acid (24.54g/100g protein or 9.93%), arginine, a basic amino acid (19.84g/100g protein or 8.01%) and phenylalanine, an aromatic amino acid (16.19g/100g protein or 5.67%)while themost abundantNEAAare the acidic amino acids, glutamic acid (40.88g/100g protein or 16.69%) and aspartic acid (22.94g/100g protein or 11.97%). Statistical analysis indicates that there is no significant difference between the essential and non-essential amino acids present in all the parts of the plant studied, since the significance value of the results are well over 0.05.