Protein and amino acid compositons of Malaysia vegetables

J. Zanariah, A. Noor Rehan and O. Rosnah

Abstract

Information on amino acid composition of our Malaysian vegetables is meagre. It is of great value to have a complete account of protein and amino acid composition of these vegetables. Forty-three types of Malaysian vegetables were analysed for their protein and amino acid contents. They included common leafy vegetables like Chinese mustard, Chinese cabbage, celery and water convolvulus and fruit vegetables such as cucumber, eggplant, brinjal and gourd. Analyses were also carried out on traditional vegetables like fern shoot, kaduk, cemperai, maman, jering and petai. The Technicon Sequential Multisampler Amino Acid Analyser System was used to detect and determine the quantitative values of amino acids. From the results obtained, many of the traditional vegetables were found to have high amount of protein and amino acids, e.g., cekur manis, papaya shoot, cemperai, sesbania, pelai, jering and fern shoot. Some of them were even superior in their protein and amino acid contents comoared with the common vegetables.

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