Moringa Stenopetala, Moringa Hildebrandtii, Moringa Drouhardii and the Moringa Oleifera.

Characteristics of seeds and kernels of Moringa-species.

A research from, Department of Livestock Sciences, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Frick, Switzerland.

The family Moringaceae is monogeneric and has 13 Moringa species
See the list here.
Moringa Oleifera, has more records of various kinds of research in scientific databases than of all the other 12 species combined. It has been found that all parts of Moringa Oleifera can be used.
For medicinal purposes, all parts of the plant (roots, leaves, seeds, bark, gum and flower) have been used to treat a multitude of diseases and deficiencies (Anwar et al., 2007).

Seed and leaf material from four different Moringa species were collected from all kind of countries to analyses them on Proximate Composition, Amino and Fatty Acid Profiles and Element Compositions

Very interesting is to see the below table, the necessary amount of leaf dry matter intake (g) to cover 15% of the daily requirement of a child for the given nutrient of Moringa leaves. Requirement values from Golden (2009), with data from FAO where available, otherwise data from other sources (e.g. Institute of Medicine, IOM).

Conclusion :

The nutritional patterns of macro- and micro nutrients of Moringa spp. leaves and kernels highlight them as potential food and feed source in the tropic and sub-tropic regions where they can be grown effectively. In general, the leaves tend to be the more promising plant parts as vegetables for human consumption, especially so for macroelements. Given the different production systems for seeds and kernels on the one hand (older trees, lower leaf to stem ratio) and leaves on the other hand (very young trees, high leaf to stem ratio, short rotation coppice), either old trees for seed and kernel production or young trees for leaf production can be utilized.

In terms of nutrient production it seems to be more promising to produce leaves over kernels and leaves of Moringa Oleifera, Moringa Hildebrandtii and Moringa Drouhardii can be considered nutritionally valuable leafy vegetables.

However, for the product to be ready for human consumption, and also suitable as high quality animal feed ingredient, the production must be safe and free of contaminants and pesticide residues. If that goal is accomplished, especially the nutrient content of the leaves but also the kernel of Moringa spp., allows them to be considered as a meaningful alternative to combatting malnutrition by being consumed directly by humans or indirectly by utilization as animal feed. Controlled clinical trials are, however, necessary to determine the extent to which Moringa can be adopted to combat malnutrition and to evaluate anecdotal knowledge about its beneficial nutritional and medical properties. Our study on macro- and micronutrients helps to close the knowledge gap, although more work is necessary; especially to determine intraspecific variation between different sampling locations versus interspecific variation.

More detailed information, please see here the analyses of Proximate Composition Four Moringa Species Stadtlander Becker 2017

With many thanks of the Institute for Animal Production in the Tropics and Subtropics, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany.