Introduction

Nature has blessed us extensively with the wide range of diversified plants used for various purposes like decoration, flowering, fruiting and medicinal, etc. Adoption and utilization of medicinal uses of many plants for commercial purposes have become emerging trend among most of the people and because of that, underutilized plants which are being utilized traditionally have gathered potential focus by researchers and industry people. India is known for wide diversity of such plants, which are utilized traditionally and have significance of being commercialized such as mahua, rhododendron, kachnar, moringa, gulmohar, palash, etc. Mahua is one of those plants which is occupying novel space in the ethnic as well as economical life of the traditional people.

Mahua (Madhuca longifolia) belongs to family sapotaceae and finds origin in different regions of India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Nepal.¹ It is a multipurpose tree which fulfils three fundamental needs of tribal individuals i.e. Food, Fodder and Fuel.² Flowers of plant are edible and have high nutritive value majorly high amount of sugars and subsequently having good amount of vitamins, proteins, minerals and fats.² Because of the higher amount of sugar, the flowers are utilized as a sweetener in preperation of numerous traditional dishes like halwa, kheer, meethi puri and barfi in mahua production belt of India.³

India is considered as a treasure of various medicinal and aromatic plant species which are being utilized since ancient time.  According to WHO (2003)⁴ approximately 65% of the world’s population integrate the medicinal plant for treatment. Mahua is one of the naturally occurring plants which possess numerous health benefits. Tribal people use mahua flowers for curing of skin diseases, headache, pitta and bronchitis.⁵ Flower juice is supplemented to lactating women for augmentation of breast milk.⁶ Due to the availability for short time at limited places and highly perishable nature of this flower, it is not yet much explored by researchers and food processors except few for its value addition. Therefore, this review has been designed in such a way to focus on recent advancement in utilization of mahua flowers as food and medicine and its future prospective regarding its value addition.

Area and Production

Mahua is a frost resistant species that can grow in marginal areas of dry tropical and subtropical forests up to an altitude of 1200-1800 m, in India. It requires mean annual temperature of 2-46℃, mean annual rainfall ranging from 550-1500 mm and mean annual humidity from 40-90 percent.³⁷ Mahua trees are distributed from India to other Asian countries like The Philippines, Pakistan, Sri Lanka to Australia.⁷

Figure 1a: Distribution of mahua tree in world  Click here to View figure

It can be found scattered in pasture lands in central India, and on river banks in semi-evergreen forests.⁶ In India, large quantities of mahua trees are found in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, Karnataka, Gujarat, Rajasthan and the evaluated annual production of mahua flowers is 45000 Million tonnes during.⁷ The yield of mahua flowers varies from 80-320 kg for every tree.² Madhya Pradesh is the most astounding mahua developing state with average trade volume of 5,730 metric tonnes and worth about Indian rupees 8.4 million.⁸ A complete detail of geographical distribution of mahua tree is given in fig. 1 (a, b).

Figure 1(b): Distribution of mahua tree in India Click here to View figure

Composition of Flower

Mahua flowers are rich source of sugars which is responsible for its sweet taste and can be utilized to make indigenous or modern alcoholic beverages. Mahua flowers contains good amount of Vitamin-C which is responsible for its antioxidant activity.⁹ Mahua flower contains carotene which is precursor of Vitamin-A. Flowers also contain good amount of minerals like Calcium and Phosphorus. Few amounts of proteins and fats are also present in mahua flowers. Brief composition of mahua flower is given in Table 1. Various researches have been done to find out medicinal properties of mahua flowers like antihelmenthic, antibacterial, analgesic, hepatoprotective, antioxidant, and anticancer (Table 2).

Table 1: Composition of Mahua flower

[Source: Gopalan et al., (2007)¹⁰; Swain et al., (2007)¹¹; Hiwale, (2015)¹²; Patel et al., (2011)²]

Table 2: Medicinal properties of mahua flowers

(SGOT- Serum glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase, SGPT- Serum glutamic pyruvic transaminase, ALP- Alkaline phosphatase)

Utilization of mahua flowers

Due to its valuable composition, the flower is used traditionally and is still utilized in value-addition of different products. Figure 2 representing a brief description of various uses (Traditional and Value-addition) of mahua flowers.

Figure 2: Utilization of mahua flowers  Click here to View figure

Traditional uses

Flower bearing period of mahua is March-April, as it is an annual bearing tree. Flower sheds when it gets mature at dawn. Fresh mahua Flowers are sweet in taste and contain different phytochemicals. Traditionally, the fresh flowers are collected and dried under direct sunlight for 2-3 days and stored in gunny bags in normal environment.

Utilization in food production

Due to high content of sugar (sucrose, glucose, fructose, arabinose, few amount of maltose and rhamnose) tribal people are utilizing mahua flowers as a sweetening agent in numerous local and traditional dishes like halwa, meethi puri, kheer and burfi.³  Behera et al., (2016)¹⁰ referred that tribal people are also utilizing the mahua flowers along with some grains (rice, ragi, jowar) or root crops (sweet potato) for preparing cake. Sundried flowers are boiled with seeds of Tamarind and Sal, taken as substitute of grain staples by poor tribal people.²⁰ Apart from this, flowers are likewise utilized as cattle feed which helps in improvement of health of cattle and increase in milk production.⁵

In term of fermented products flowers are also used as crude material for production of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. Local people of North-West India used to collect and dry the mahua flowers for preparation of “mahua daaru” which contains 20-40 (%) alcohol.²² Mahua flowers are mixed with water and kept aside for fermentation. During the fermentation Navshar (Ammonium chloride) and jaggery are added. Sometime black pepper is added to develop a strong hot flavour. After fermentation, the mixture is kept in a container having traditional distillation setup. It is reported that one kilogram of dried flowers yields 300-400 ml of daaru by this method.²²

Mahua flowers are also utilized by the tribal people of Orissa to make a Country liquor called mahuli.⁷ The method of mahuli preparation is similar to earlier described method of mahua daaru but only the difference found in distillation process and ingredients i.e. at the time of fermentation bakhar tablets [Tablet consists of Asparagus racemosus (roots), Cissampleos pareira L (roots), Clerodendrum serrautum (roots), Dipteracanthus suffruticosus (roots), Elephantopus scaber L (roots), Lygodium flexuosum (roots), Ochna obtisata (roots), Phoenix acaulis (roots), Holarrhena pubescens (bark), Homalium nepalense (bark), Woodfordia fruticose L (flower), Xantolis tomentosa (fruit), Madhuka indica Gmel (seeds)]  is added.⁷ Fermented flowers are kept for distillation and alcohol content which found in distillate is about 30-40 (%).²² A brief description of various non-fermented and fermented traditional products is described in Table 3.

Table 3: Traditional uses of mahua flowers

Utilization for medicinal purposes

In Ayurveda, mahua flowers are considered as to be cooling agent, carminative, galactagogue, and astringent.⁵ It is also reported to be beneficial for heart, skin, and eye diseases.²⁰ Mahua flowers are used traditionally as a remedy of many diseases by tribal people. Fresh juice of flower is utilized as tonic and also cure skin diseases, eye diseases, raktapitta and headache due to “pitta”.⁵ Sunita and Sarojini, (2013)²³ referred that tribal people offer raw flowers to lactating mothers for increasing their lactation. Roasted flowers are consumed to cure cough and bronchitis by local people.²⁴ Acharya and Srivastava, (2008)²⁵ reported that mahua flowers can cure impotency and general debility when consumed with milk. Flowers fried in ghee act as a cooling agent and help to cure piles.⁵ Table 4 provides brief description of utilization of mahua flower as remedy for various diseases by traditional people.

Value addition of mahua flowers

Nowadays the researchers and food processors are getting attracted toward the underutilized crops for the development of new products. Because of this few products are developed from mahua flowers also. But these are very limited at limited research institutes, universities, and industries, which might be due to limited availability in limited space and perishability. Some of the possible products which has been prepared from mahua flowers by

Table 4: Traditional medicinal uses of mahua flowers

approach for researchers and processors to utilize this flower commercially for its value addition in term of fermented foods and nonfermented foods.

Sinha et al., (2017)⁵ reported that fresh flower juice is concentrated and used as liquid sweetener in bakery and confectionary products. Fresh flowers are also utilized for making puree and sauces by crushing the flowers.³ Pulp of ripe flowers can be utilized to make intermediate moisture foods (IMF) like jam, jelly, marmalade.^3,5,26

Recently Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneshwar have developed many value-added products from dry mahua flowers like candy, cake, RTS, toffee, squash and ladoo.²⁸ Mishra et al., (2013)²⁹ reported the storage study of mahua RTS in combination of ginger and fennel extracts. Other value-added products like candied flower, glazed flower and mahua bar are also developed from dried mahua flowers.³⁰

Because of having high amount of fermentable sugars, mahua flowers are utilized for making wine by various researchers scientifically using Saccharomyces cerevisiae.^22,31-32 Freshly prepared mahua wine has been fortified with traditional Indian herbs (Black pepper, cinnamon, clove, cumin, fenugreek, nutmeg, fennel and Indian cassia) for development of new value-added product, called mahua vermouth.³³ Malavade and Jadav, (2000)³⁴ reported that dry flowers are also utilized to make fermented products like brandy, acetone, and lactic acid.  Beside that all mahua flowers can be successfully used as a substrate for surface fermentation using Aspergillus niger for production of citric acid. But in these aspects the availability of the documentation is still very low which need to be explored by the researchers and food processors. The complete detail of the utilization of mahua flower recently by various researchers for preparation of value added products is given in table 5 along with them specific remarks.

Table 5: Value-added products of mahua flowers

Economic view

The major factors affecting the quality of mahua flowers and their food products, are poor post-harvest storage and lack of modern technologies for the value addition of mahua flowers.⁷ As a result, the poor tribal people and small local entrepreneurs are facing lots of economic problems due to low profit market of mahua flowers and their products. The described value added products in this review, will play an important role for the sustainable development of tribal economy and wellness of local folks.

Future Prospective and Conclusion

Due to its multipurpose use it is satisfying the basic need of tribal people in the form of 3F i.e. feed, fodder and fuel because of its vital components and abundant availability in that particular areas. But due to its limited availability at the limited places for the short span only it is still untouched by the processors, researchers and consumers beside those places and particular time. Based on the current review knowledge the quality attributes of the flower are getting deteriorated because of the malpractices followed by tribal people for its preservation. To overcome these issues, there is a strong need for the commercial utilization of this flower along with advance technologies for the development of various valuable food products along with their availability throughout the year, which will definitely help in upliftment of tribal people economy and their sustainable development. A development of efficient technologies and awareness among the tribal people will definitely help in improving the quality attributes of the flower which may help in enhancement of employment and income of those societies.

Acknowledgements

The authors are highly grateful to School of Agriculture, Lovely Professional University Phagwara, Punjab, India for providing financial assistance and infrastructure for preparation of this review.

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