The potential use of quinoa as a new non-traditional leafy vegetable crop

Abstract

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is one of the oldest food crops in the world, with evidence of cultivation dating back for more than 7000 years in Andean region. Using of quinoa fresh leaves as a vegetable have not been reported or well-studied yet. Therefore, the present study was conducted during winter growing seasons of 2014 and 2015 at the Experimental Farm of Agricultural Botany Dept., Faculty of Agriculture, Ain Shams University, Shoubra El-Kheima, Cairo, Egypt. Intended to examine the potential use of fresh leaves of two quinoa cultivars (Hualhuas and CICA), as a new non-traditional leafy vegetable crop compared to spinach cultivar (Balady). The vegetative growth, yield and leaf chemical compositions for young plants harvested at 45 days after sowing date were evaluated. The experiments were designed in a complete randomized block design with 4 replicates. The obtained results revealed that young quinoa plants of CICA showed the highest performance for all investigated vegetative growth characters and yield compared with Hualhuas and spinach plants in both seasons. Except for leaf area in both seasons and fresh weight of leaves/plant in the second season, whereas the highest values were attained by spinach plant. Concerning leaf chemical compositions, the obtained results showed that Hualhuas cultivar recorded the highest values for leaf pigments, ash, crude fats, crude proteins, total phenolic content (TPC), total flavonoids content (TFC) and antioxidant activity% compared to CICA and spinach plants. However, spinach plants gave the highest values of crude fiber, total soluble carbohydrates (TSC), nitrate (NO3) and nitrite (NO2) contents in both seasons. It is likely that the levels of anti-nutritional factors (NO3, NO2 and oxalate) in the leaves of the three studied cultivars are far below the limits permitted to be found in leafy vegetables. As for leaf mineral contents, the leaves of CICA plants had higher K, Ca and Fe contents, while spinach plants exhibited relatively higher Na, Zn and Cu contents. It is appeared from the obtained results that the contents of evaluated nutritive values were significantly influenced by cultivar, both quinoa cultivars had higher ash, crude fats, crude proteins, TPC, TFC, antioxidant activity%, N, K, Ca and Mn contents compared to spinach cultivar in both seasons. The obtained results confirmed the suitability of potential use of young quinoa plants as a new non-traditional leafy vegetable crop under Egyptian conditions, but further researches are still needed.