Butterfly pea: Aesthetic and Valuable Flower

          Butterfly pea is commonly known as Clitoria ternatea for scientific name. It is native to South and Southeast Asia. Nowadays it has been presented to Africa, Australia and USA. The flower is deep blue and 4 X 3 cm (long X wide) as figure below.

 

          For food industry butterfly pea is used as natural food dye in rice, dessert and beverage. Moreover it is also applied as a drink. It makes food and drink tasty with its color.

 

          Focus on traditional medicine butterfly pea has been widely used as herb for several symptoms e.g.

–          It can enhance memory as nootropic drug.

–          It can antistress for anxiolytic symptom.

–          It can be used as tranquilizer.

–          It can reduce intensity of human behavior caused by serotonin and acetylcholine.

–          Furthermore its extract affect pharmacological activities including antimicrobial, antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, diuretic, local anesthetic, antidiabetic, insecticidal, blood platelet aggregation-inhibiting and for use as a vascular smooth muscle relaxing properties.

          The extraction method such as solvent extraction is popular applied to extract active ingredient in butterfly pea. Because of its various active compounds such as triterpenoids, flavonol glycosides, anthocyanins, and steroids butterfly pea has been consumed for food, drink and traditional medicine.

 

References:

1) Clitoria ternatea – Wikipedia

2) อัญชัน – สารพันสมุนไพร (google.com)

3) ดอกอัญชัน (bloggang.com)

4) ข้าวหอมอัญชัน (easycookingmenu.com)

5) วิธีทำ “ขนมดอกอัญชัน” เมนูขนมไทยสีสันเตะตา รสชาติถูกใจ เนื้อนุ่มหนึบ – Wongnai

6) สูตรการทำน้ำดอกอัญชัน มีสรรพคุณที่ส่งผลดีต่อสุขภาพมากมาย (elainesporkandpie.com)

7) https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov