New study publishes additional use for miracle tree

The Drumstick Tree, or Horseradish Tree, is commonly used in the kitchen in all countries of the tropics. (UBCbotanicalgarden.org)
The Drumstick Tree, or Horseradish Tree, is commonly used in the kitchen in all countries of the tropics. (UBCbotanicalgarden.org)

A report published last month in Current Protocols of Microbiology brings to light a common-knowledge use for seeds from the Moringa oleifera tree: low cost water purification.

An abstract of the study recommends the “indigenous water treatment method” for “…simplified, point-of-use, low-risk water treatment where rural and peri-urban people living in extreme poverty are presently drinking highly turbid and microbiologically contaminated water.”

The process, which involves crushing the seed into a powder, is said to produce 90 to 99 percent bacterial reduction.

The study states that approximately 1.4 billion people in the world live in extreme poverty and rely upon “highly turbid and untreated pathogenic (viral and bacterial) surface water.”

–Toshio Suzuki