A Review of Pharmacognostical Studies on Moringa oleifera Lam. flowers

Moringa oleifera Lam. of the family Moringaceae, popularly called ‘miracle tree’ is a native of sub Himalayan tracts of Northern India and is widely cultivated in tropical and subtropical regions. Research on Moringa mainly pivoted around its leaves and seeds because of their immense nutraceutical potential but recently there is a greater interest in flowers too, mostly inspired by the positive outcomes of several pharmacognostical studies on flowers. Moringa flower is a rich reservoir of bioactive phytochemicals and crude flower extracts showed promising antibacterial, antifungal, anti larval, antioxidant, anti inflammatory and anticancer properties. This review concisely presents the various phytochemicals identified and isolated as well as the various bioassays employed to validate the therapeutic potential of flower. It is prepared after a detailed search on Google scholar. Reports on Moringa oleifera flower were sorted and tabulated based on the bioassays performed and solvents used for extraction. A grading pattern is adopted for comparing efficiency of different extracts in eliciting bioactivities. Many of these studies are at the preliminary stage but two of them present advanced mechanisms. First is the presence of a proteinaceous larvicidal compound ‘MoFTI’ in the flower capable of inhibiting larval trypsin of Aedes aegypti. The second describes flower extract’s anti inflammatory mechanism effecting via NF-KB pathway and consequent suppression of inflammatory mediators’ activation, but short of identifying lead compound/compounds behind this effect. Thus authors suggest further studies to elucidate the detailed mechanisms, identify and isolate the active compound or compounds of synergism behind the many therapeutic potential of the Moringa flower extracts.