Agriculture Business Week

DS Pinoy Malunggay Products’ dynamic duo lets us in on how to stand out in the market of niche services and products.

Called “sajina” across the Indian subcontinent and “moringa” in English, malunggay is one of the country’s most useful plants-its purpose as varied and expansive as it’s one of the world’s most nutritional food sources and one of its most effective flocculants and coagulants that ever existed.

For years, Indians, Filipinos, Malaysians and Thais have been including malunggay leaves on their daily diets. Most Asians use them like spinach and the malunggay s fruit as a vegetable, much like asparagus. Both leaves and fruits are very nutritious, which contain many vitamins and minerals. One hundred grams of cooked malunggay leaves contain 3.1 g. protein, 0.6 g. fiber, 1.7 mg iron, 2,820 mg B-carotene, 0.07 mg thiamin, 0.14 mg riboflavin, 96 mg calcium, 29 mg phosphorus, 1.1 mg niacin and 53 mg vitamin C.

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More and more entrepreneurs are getting into the malunggay bandwagon, They are processing the leaves into value-added products.

One family who is into the business of producing malunggay powder is that of Jose Manalo, owner of Life Pure Wellness, a corporation based in Quezon City. The family has long been exporting native onions to countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hongkong. They usually had rejects which they made into onion powder. The problem was that there were not enough rejects to process the whole year round.

Then they discovered the potentials of malungay with its varied nutritive contents. They did their own research and then went into malunggay powder production in 2007. The beauty about malunggay is that it is available throughout the year.

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Malunggay (Moringa spp.) is not only one of the world’s most useful plant; studies show it is also the most nutritious. This lowly crop is grown for human food, livestock forage, medicine, dye and water treatment.

Based on the research conducted by Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), 100 grams or one cup of cooked malunggay leaves contain 3.1 g protein, 0.6 g fiber, 96 mg calcium, 29 mg phosphorus, 1.7 mg iron, 2,820 mg betacarotene, .07 mg thiamine, 0.14 mg riboflavin, 1.1 mg niacin, and 53 mg ascorbic acid or vitamin C. It also has antioxidant activity ranging about 71 percent with aetocopherol (vitamin E) equivalent of 45.

DOST also noted that malunggay leaves are an incomparable source of the sulfur containing amino acids methionine and cystine, the natural minerals that humans are often lacking of.

The following suggested cultural practices were developed at Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC) in the Taiwan lowlands. Growers may modify the practices to suit local soil, weather, and pest and disease condition.

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Jatropha and malunggay, whose production is strongly being pushed by the Government and private sector, both grow in marginal lands with minimal soil moisture and fertility. Their rate of production is also marginal, unless the soil can have regular and adequate moisture and fertility.

This can be realized through small-scale rainwater-harvesting or water conservancy, especially if it will be integrated with the application of organic or a combination of chemical and organic fertilizers.

WHAT IS RAINWATER-HARVESTING?
Some of the rainwater provides moisture to trees and plants, some are used as irrigation water, while some are absorbed by the soil and eventually stored as groundwater.

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Only a few people know that malunggay grows well in sandy loam soil. An Ilokano farmer is one of these few people. He has transformed a wasteland with sandy loam soil in Barangay Salapasap, Cabugao, Ilocos Sur into a malunggay plantation, and he have been earning a lot from it.

In 1972, when the Green Revolution was just beginning, Antonio Solima, now 69, bought a 1.3-hectare wasteland along the coast of the China Sea not really knowing that the land would be a virtual “goldmine”. The only vegetation seen in the area was what the locals call kandaroma, a bushy evergreen plant with lots of thorny, intertwining branches which usually grows along the coastline.

For this reason, it was very unlikely for a person in the right mind to invest even P0.22 per square meter for this kind of land 35 years ago, but. Antonio proceeded anyway to make a gamble with his P3,000 savings. Since all he wanted then was to own a land.

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