TayuyaCayaponia tayuya

Did you know?

• Tayuya belongs to the gourd family, the same family as cucumbers, melons, squashes and pumpkins^{[1, 9]}.

• One of its Brazilian names, abobrinha-do-mato, means "little wild squash"^{[2, 3]}.

• Like its garden cousins, it climbs with coiled tendrils^{[2, 9]}.

• Its root tastes bitter. The bitterness comes from cucurbitacin-type compounds, the same group that can make a cucumber taste bitter^{[5, 13]}.

• Scientists have isolated 24 related compounds from the root and named them cayaponosides, after the plant's genus^{[5, 6]}.

• The name has confused even botanists: in 1838 another botanist, Martius, published Bryonia tayuya for a different vine, now called Cayaponia martiana^{[1, 2]}.

Origins and history

Tayuya is a woody climbing vine that clambers over surrounding vegetation on coiled tendrils, and below ground it forms a large, swollen root^{[1, 2, 7, 9]}. It bears small cream to greenish-white flowers and small berries that ripen orange to red^{[2, 3, 10]}. Its range runs from Ecuador and Peru through Bolivia and across much of Brazil, from the Amazon to the country's northeast, southeast and south^{[1, 2]}.

The vine entered the scientific record through José Mariano da Conceição Vellozo, a Franciscan friar born in Minas Gerais who spent years collecting the plants of the Rio de Janeiro region. His Flora Fluminensis began to appear in print in 1825, followed by volumes of illustrations from 1827^{[1, 2, 11]}. He named it Bryonia tayuya, placing it in the bryony genus, and it was later moved to the genus Cayaponia^{[1, 2]}. The species name keeps the local name, tayuya.

In Brazil the plant has many local names, including taiuiá, tajujá, abobrinha-do-mato and guardião^{[2, 3]}. One of them, tayuyá do fruto encarnado, "red-fruited tayuya", describes its ripe berries^{[2, 3]}. The root is the part traditionally used, and it is also the part chemists have studied most closely^{[2, 4, 5, 7]}.

Traditional uses

Clinical studies of tayuya in people are still few, but its root has a long place in the folk tradition of Brazil, Peru and Colombia, and in Brazil's first official pharmacopoeia.

• The root

  The large root is the part used in folk tradition.^{[2, 7]}

• An official herb

  Taiuiá root was included in the first edition of the Brazilian Official Pharmacopoeia, completed in 1926 and published in 1929, which listed a syrup made from it.^[12]

• Joint comfort

  In the folk tradition of Brazil, Peru and Colombia, tayuya root has long been taken for the joints. Tayuya supports joint comfort and promotes a healthy inflammatory response.*^[7]

Plant compounds

Tayuya root's signature compounds are cucurbitacins, bitter triterpenes typical of the gourd family^{[5, 13]}. They include 23,24-dihydrocucurbitacin B and cucurbitacin R^[8], and a series of 24 related glucosides named cayaponosides, after the plant^{[4, 5, 6]}. Each cayaponoside is a cucurbitacin-type core joined to a molecule of glucose^{[4, 5, 6]}. The root also contains flavonoids^[7].