CaiguaCyclanthera pedata

Did you know?

• Caigua has many Andean names, among them kaiwa (or kaywa) and achocha, also written achojcha, a Quechua name^{[2, 4, 5]}.

• The ripe fruit is almost hollow: a thin shell of flesh around a large cavity where the seeds develop. That makes it easy to stuff^{[2, 4]}.

• When Linnaeus named caigua in 1753, he placed it in the genus Momordica and noted that it came from Peru; it now has a genus of its own, Cyclanthera^{[1, 2]}.

• In the Camonica Valley of the Italian Alps, farmers have grown caigua since at least 1960 under the local name milione^{[2, 3]}. There it is never eaten raw: it is pickled and stuffed with anchovies and capers^[2].

• Caigua has traveled as far as China and the Himalaya, where it now grows as an introduced plant^[1].

Origins and history

Caigua is a vigorous, fast-growing annual vine that climbs to about 4.5 meters^[4]. Its fruits are about 6 to 15 centimeters long^[4], and inside they are nearly empty, with a large cavity where the seeds develop^[4]. The plant grows wild from southern Mexico through Central America to northwestern Argentina^[1], but its heartland is the Andes^{[2, 3]}, where it has been grown for its fruit since before the Spanish arrived. The Incas cultivated it and ate its fruit^{[2, 5]}.

European botanists knew caigua by the eighteenth century^{[1, 2]}, and from the Andes it has since spread far beyond South America. In Brazil it is known as maxixe do reino^[2], in the Italian Alps as milione^{[2, 3]}, and it has been introduced to parts of China and the Himalaya^[1].

In Peru and its neighbors, caigua is eaten as a vegetable. Young fruits are eaten raw, often in salads, and have a mild flavor usually compared to cucumber, though without the crunch^{[2, 4]}. Mature fruits are cooked: the hollow fruit is filled with meat or fish, the way a squash is stuffed^{[2, 4]}. Caigua also goes into soups^[5], and the young shoots and leaves are cooked as greens^[4].

Traditional uses

Clinical studies of caigua in people are still few, but its place in Andean food and folk tradition is long and well documented.

• An Andean vegetable

  Caigua is first a food: eaten raw when young, stuffed when mature, added to soups, and cooked as greens.^{[2, 4, 5]}

• Heart and circulation

  In Latin American folk tradition, caigua fruit juice, or a tea made from the fruit, is taken for the heart and circulation. Caigua supports cardiovascular health.*^{[2, 3]}

• Antioxidant compounds

  Caigua fruit provides naturally occurring flavonoids and other phenolic compounds with antioxidant activity.*^{[3, 5]}

Plant compounds

Most of the research on caigua's chemistry has focused on the fruit and its flavonoids. Flavonoids are the main plant compounds in the fruit^{[2, 5]}, and several flavone glycosides, plant compounds in which a flavone is joined to a sugar, have been isolated from it^[2]. The leaves are rich in flavone glycosides too^[3]. The fruit also contains tannins and other phenolic compounds, and fruit preparations have shown antioxidant activity in laboratory tests^{[3, 5]}.