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Plants & People: The Intersection of Botany and Human Experience

Maca Vegetative Morphology

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Maca… maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you consume it on a daily basis. Maca is the highest elevation crop known today, and is native to the high elevation Andes mountains in Peru, growing in elevations up to 4500 m high! Maca has been a highly valued commodity for many indigenous peoples within the Andes mountains of Peru throughout history and persists to be valued today. Known for its turnip-like shape due to its bulbous hypocotyl, it is highly sought after for its roots. Consuming the roots will result in many notable benefits, such as nutritional benefits, mood improvements, and enhancements in energy, strength… even fertility, all which are backed by numerous studies. These benefits are all due to the numerous nutrients, fibers, bioactive compounds, and natural compounds lepidiline A and B that are contained within Maca. Combined, they all make Maca the nutritional powerhouse that is today. Once this nutritional powerhouse was advertised to the world, it became an immediate hit. The demand for Maca created a market boom and countries started trying to cultivate the plant to meet the demand. One country that cultivated Maca is China. In the high mountains of Yunnan, Maca was successfully cultivated and thus became a common ingredient in Chinese traditional medicine. As such, Maca remains an important dietary source not only in Peru, but as well as worldwide! With more research being done today to further explore what components are in Maca, only time will tell what additional health benefits Maca has to offer us. By Mellanie Gamero and Jacqueline Duong
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Lepidium meyenii: The fertility root 145 Maca… maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you consume it on a daily basis. Maca is the highest elevation crop known today, and is native to the high elevation Andes mountains in Peru, growing in elevations up to 4500 m high! Maca has been a highly valued commodity for many indigenous peoples within the Andes mountains of Peru throughout history and persists to be valued today. Known for its turnip-like shape due to its bulbous hypocotyl, it is highly sought after for its roots. Consuming the roots will result in many notable benefits, such as nutritional benefits, mood improvements, and enhancements in energy, strength… even fertility, all which are backed by numerous studies. These benefits are all due to the numerous nutrients, fibers, bioactive compounds, and natural compounds lepidiline A and B that are contained within Maca. Combined, they all make Maca the nutritional powerhouse that is today. Once this nutritional powerhouse was advertised to the world, it became an immediate hit. The demand for Maca created a market boom and countries started trying to cultivate the plant to meet the demand. One country that cultivated Maca is China. In the high mountains of Yunnan, Maca was successfully cultivated and thus became a common ingredient in Chinese traditional medicine. As such, Maca remains an important dietary source not only in Peru, but as well as worldwide! With more research being done today to further explore what components are in Maca, only time will tell what additional health benefits Maca has to offer us. By Mellanie Gamero and Jacqueline Duong plain 2022-06-03T09:19:27-07:00
Nomenclatural History
Maca. Also commonly known as Peruvian ginseng, this Peruvian herbaceous plant is part of the Brassicaceae, or mustard, family alongside radishes and turnips. Prior to being identified as Maca, Spanish indigenous people referred to Maca as “maca-maca,” “ayak chicira,” “ayak willku,” and “maino.” Aside from its indigenous name, we also commonly refer to Maca by its scientific taxonomic name Lepidium meyenii… for the most part. After this binomial name was established, confusion about Maca’s taxonomic name arose because another taxonomic name for Maca was proposed called Lepidium sp. This name simply served as an alternative name to L. meyenii. However, the alternative name is rarely used today compared to Lepidium meyenii. Just as there was some form of resolve between the use of Lepiduim meyenii and Lepidium sp. yet another taxonomic name was proposed for Maca in 1990 to justify a domesticated and “new Maca species,” called Lepidium peruvianum that was, apparently, distinct from Lepidium meyenii (Hermann & Bernet, 2009). This binomial name was not really taken into consideration up until a decade later when Maca became a commodity crop internationally because companies made use of the name, Lepidium peruvianum, as a means of implying the Maca is Peruvian and pure to uphold their product value (Hermann & Bernet, 2009).
Evolutionary History
Turns out, very little is known about the origins of Lepidium meyenii, however, some studies have inferred that the Genus Lepidium potentially originated in the Mediterranean basin as a diploid species, but this has not been fully confirmed. With respect to this inference, ongoing studies have found that later immigrant species of Lepidium are autogamy and polyploidy rather than diploidy, which grant these species more adaptability and resiliency to new environments. For instance, outside of where Maca originated, there is also some evidence that indicates the colonization of Lepidium meyenii in the Americas and Australia occurred due to long distance dispersal sometime during the tertiary and quaternary periods of the Cenozoic era (UHTCO, 2007). By evolving autogamy and polyploidy properties, Maca had a fair advantage because if it was capable of withstanding and growing within the harsh environments that characterize the Peruvian Andes Mountains, then this also supports how Maca was also able to colonize and survive outside of its geographic origins.
Ecology, Life History, & Wild Ancestry
In addition to its ability to grow in high elevations, Maca is also highly adapted to growing in very poor soil quality and has one of the highest frost tolerances within the Puna grassland of the Andean mountains in Peru. Typically these frosts occur regularly with mean maximum temperatures reaching no more than 12 °C during the growing season every month. Although capable of growing within poor soils, the process of growth and cultivation itself takes up all the nutrients from the soil, leaving the surrounding soil deprived, which not only affects the soil directly, but it also poses limitations in growing other plant species within the same soil. However, Maca would not be at fault in terms of interfering with the growth of other plant species because of devoid soil nutrients. Rather, other crops simply cannot survive such harsh conditions like Maca.
Cultivated as the only starch crop compared to other species in the Brassicaceae family, under ideal conditions, Maca planting takes place annually within the winter between November and December. Starting off as seedlings, planting Maca in the winter time allows the seeds to mature within 8-9 months, which then allows harvesting to take place in the summertime between July and August. Then after the ninth month, and the start of the harvesting phase, the Maca seeds mature into bulbs. These bulbs are then separated and sifted within the soil, where they are left for 4-6 more months in the soil until their aerial parts (their stems and leaves) start to develop.
The genus Lepidium belongs to the taxonomic tribe Lepidieae of the Brassicaceae family along with 174 other species. Within this taxonomic group, Maca remains the only species that can be cultivated as a starch crop (UHTCO, 2007). In terms of wild ancestry, very little is known, but there still remains a lot of ongoing research to obtain a further understanding of the taxonomic relationships that Lepidium meyenii is involved in. What we do know so far is that there are seven wild species of Lepidium have been reported in Peru, including Maca. However, the origins of Maca and the other six species, as well as how they relate to Maca are unknown (UHTCO, 2007).
Historical Accounts
In terms of the earliest signs of Maca cultivation, it was initially presumed that cultivation started as soon as 2000 years ago, however, further research discovered that cultivation actually took place a lot sooner. In fact, the origins of Maca cultivation started taking place as early as 1600 B.C, backed by findings of primitive cultivars which were encountered in sites dating back to that time period (Black, 2019). Moreso, the newest of studies have shown that cultivation took place in 3800 B.C, so there is quite a range of speculation as to when cultivation truly began. Fast forward to many centuries later, the Spanish arrived in Peru in 1533 and not only grew acquainted with the Peruvian land, but also with Maca. As the Spanish encountered, and started making extensive use of Maca, they started recognizing and taking advantage of Maca’s newfound benefits at the time. However, it is important to note that Maca’s notable properties were actually discovered much earlier by the indigenous people of Peru prior to Spanish conquest, but were not eminent to other individuals aside from the indigenous Peruvians themselves. One of the first prominent benefits the Spanish discovered while utilizing Maca was its ability to improve fertility in 1549, as Maca was given to cattle in order to improve their rate of reproduction, and thus their yield. By 1653, a collection of Maca’s benefits and their effects were “officially” documented by Father Cabo. Then in 1843, German botanist, Gerhard Walpers, gave Maca its binomial taxonomic name, Lepidium meyenii, Walp taking his name into account for the newly named species as well. About a century later, in 1960, Peruvian botanist Gloria Chacon Roldan introduced the alternative name for Lepidium meyenii, called Lepidium sp. as mentioned previously. Reaching the late 1900’s, Maca became known on a more global scale, but wasn’t used much. For instance, by 1964 Maca finally reached markets worldwide, but was not a commodity item at all. Thus it wasn’t cultivated much up until the late 1990’s, where it was idealized as a superfood and persists to be used extensively today!
Domestication History
Out of all other Brassicaceae species, Maca is the only species that is known to have been domesticated in the Americas. In particular, about 2,000 years ago, Maca is said to have been domesticated in San Blas, Junin, a town in Peru, by the Incas. Within Peru, Maca has been used extensively for traditional use as a remedy for a variety of issues and to fulfill certain functions such as maintaining hormonal balance, alleviating aches, improving energy levels and stamina, promoting reproductive health, etc.
However, it is important to understand what drove Maca domestication in the first place. Fairly recent research indicates that Maca domestication took root (no pun intended) when the Maca root increased in both size and abundance over time. The increase in root size and abundance started soon after 1600 BC up until 1000-300 BC, where the root reached its peak size (Hermann & Bernet, 2009).
Further information on the domestication of Maca remains unknown for the most part since there is little research and information about Maca’s ancestry and taxonomic lineage. To this day, extensive research is being conducted in order to pinpoint more concrete information on Maca domestication.
Cultivation Practices
Due to the numerous health benefits associated with the consumption of Maca, it only makes sense that it would be highly sought after in countries other than where it is native. Once the health benefits of Maca became publicized in China, the market for Maca boomed. Because of the sudden and great demand for Maca root, it was imported into China under the administration of the Ministry of Health in 2002 (Li et al., 2019). After multiple attempts to find the right location and learn the correct farming technique, Maca was successfully cultivated in Lijiang, Yunnan in 2003 (Li et al., 2019). Since Maca thrives in high altitude alpine areas, such as the Andes of Peru where it is native, Chinese maca is produced in the high mountains of Yunnan (Lac, 2016). In these areas, farmers that grew Maca in Peru were flown to China to teach Chinese farmers how to properly plant, grow, and collect Maca. Using what they learned, farmers from Lijiang planted as much Maca as they could and created systems to collect the Maca crop for nationwide distribution (Lac, 2016). However, although cultivation was successful, there is a difference in appearance between Chinese Maca and Peruvian Maca.
Reproductive & Vegetative Morphological Description of Maca
Maca has both an overground and underground part. The appearance of the part of the Maca that is overground is small and flat. In high elevations, the Maca would need to survive in cold weather, against strong winds, and other extreme environmental conditions. As a result, the appearance of the Maca has adapted to overcome these extreme conditions, with one of them being its flat leaves. Its flat overground appearance is meant to help withstand the impact of strong winds (Gonzales, 2012). As for the underground part, it consists of the hypocotyl-root axis. The hypocotyl is located between the true roots and the cotyledons. The shape of the hypocotyl is bulbous, making it similar in appearance to turnips and radishes. The edible part of the plant is the tuber, which consists of the hypocotyl and the root. This hypocotyl-root axis contains the storage organ to hold high amount of water. This adaptation is to help the plant survive the dry seasons (Gonzales, 2012).
Maca is a flowering plant that self-polinates. More specifically, the flowers that grow from the overground portion are self-polinating (Murigi, 2017). The flowers bear small capsule shaped fruits, with each of these fruits containing two ovoid seeds. The seeds take on a reddish-gray appearance and it is from these seeds that more Maca plants can be grown (Murigi, 2017).
How Nutritious is Maca? Which Parts of It Are Actually Nutritious?
Maca, a nutritional powerhouse, is filled with many significant nutrients, including various amino acids, phytonutrients, fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals. More specifically, a rough nutritional breakdown of Maca is as follows: 59% carbohydrates, 10.2% protein, 8.5% fiber, and the remaining percentages are among different fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, sterols, and sugars found in Maca (The Maca Team, 2022). Additionally, Maca contains bioactive components that function to help sexual and fertility enhancement, reduce fatigue, and acts as an antioxidant to protect against diseases, such as heart disease (Li et al., 2019). Some of the bioactive components include isothiocyanate, sterol, phenolic compounds, glucosinolates, and macamides. Not only does Maca help protect against heart disease, but it can also help protect against cancer. Through natural compounds lepidiline A and B, Maca expresses high cytotoxic activity against multiple human cancer cell lines (Li et al., 2019). All of these nutritional benefits can be gained by consuming the root of the Maca. Since eating the plant raw can have adverse effects on your health, it is recommended to boil it before consuming it. In traditional Chinese medicine, Maca is dried naturally and then boiled in a decoction to maximize the health benefits gained from the plant. Maca can also be consumed in capsules and powders to make it easier to consume in everyday recipes.
Has Maca Improved Our Way of Life? Will it Continue to Benefit Us?
Through the different types of Maca, red, black, and yellow, Maca interacts differently with humans. The yellow Maca is the most common type and is often used to enhance mood, increase cognitive behavior, and balance hormones. Black Maca, also known as "mens maca," increases strength and is used to support male fertility. As for red Maca, it works similarly to yellow and black Maca but also helps to promote fertility in women. In the past, knowledge of these benefits stayed withing Peru. However, after much publicity, word of the plant’s health benefits spread far and wide. Now, Maca can often be found in many different countries and being sold in multiple forms. No matter the form, whether it be through powder or as a whole dried root, Maca has been widely used to improve the way of life of those who consume it. Although the hype that initially surrounded the plant when it was first introduced worldwide has now died down, its health benefits are still there. Currently, there has been new research implemented in institutions in Peru to further research the benefits of Maca. Through these research, more findings could be released that could potentially revitalize the hype for Maca and induce another Maca market boom.
References
1. Black, J. (2020, April 5). History of the forgotten maca root. Herbs America, Inc. Retrieved May 20, 2022, from https://herbs-america.com/history-maca-root/
2. Gonzales, G. F. (2012). Ethnobiology and Ethnopharmacology of Lepidium meyenii (Maca), a Plant from the Peruvian Highlands. Evidence-Based Complementary Alternative Medicine. PubMed Central. https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/193496
3. Lac, E. B. (2016, Fall). The Rise and Fall of Maca in China. HerbalGram, (111), 28-30. https://www.herbalgram.org/resources/herbalgram/issues/111/table-of-contents/hg111-wnews-china/
4. Li, A., Duan, S., Dang, Y., Zhang, X., Xia, K., Liu, S., Han, X., Wen, J., Li, Z., Wang, X., Liu, J., Yuan, P., & Gao, X.-D. (2019). Origin identification of Chinese Maca using electronic nose coupled with GC-MS. Scientific Reports. Nature Portfolio. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-47571-0
5. Maca. Eat Smarter USA. (n.d.). Retrieved May 20, 2022, from https://eatsmarter.com/theme/maca-1
6. Maca (lepidium meyenii). Cultivariable. (n.d.). Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://www.cultivariable.com/instructions/andean-roots-tubers/how-to-grow-maca/#history
7. Murigi, E. (2017, November 29). What Is Maca (Lepidium meyenii) And Where Is It Grown? World Atlas. Retrieved May 26, 2022, from https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-maca-lepidium-meyenii-and-where-is-it-grown.html
8. The Maca Team. (n.d.). What is Maca. The History of Maca - A Complete Look At An Ancient Superfood. Retrieved May 20, 2022, from https://www.themacateam.com/maca-history#:~:text=Archaeological%20evidence%20suggests%20that%20domestication,of%20energy%20and%20especially%20fertility
9. UHTCO. (2007, December 2). Research on Maca. UHTCO. Retrieved May 20, 2022, from http://uhtco.com/en/macapro/more-info/research-on-maca/maca-lepidium-meyenii-walp