Noni (Morinda citrifolia) Fruit And its Uses

By Chris Kilham

One of the primary challenges in the field of botanical medicines
is to effectively translate a beneficial traditional folk remedy into a
beneficial shelf stable product. In Polynesia, ripe noni fruit,
Morinda citrifolia, is put into a container, where it quickly
decomposes and ferments. The pungent amber juice that
remains at the top of the fermented fruit is consumed daily as a
prophylactic, to enhance overall vitality and well being.

Morinda citrifolia is a small tree that grows up to ten meters in
height, with an irregular, open crown and shiny, dark green
leaves. The tree possesses a light brown to light gray bark, and
light-colored wood. The tree flowers several times annually,
producing clusters of small, five-petal blossoms with finely
haired centers. The flowers give off a sweet fragrance. Morinda
citrifolia also provides fruit a few times a year, producing oblong
fruit with circular scars, which are green when unripe and
yellowish-white when fully ripe. The fruits have a soft, watery
flesh, and a cheesy aroma that becomes increasingly
pronounced and pungent during the ripening process.

Indigenous to Southeast Asia, noni was domesticated and
cultivated by Polynesians, first in Tahiti and the Marquesas, and
eventually in the farthest outpost of their culture, Hawaii. Today
noni grows in most regions of the South Pacific, India, the
Caribbean, South America and the West Indies. Its broad
dispersal speaks of its value to traditional cultures.

Although the name "noni" is Polynesian, some marketers
erroneously claim that Polynesian noni is a different species
from Indian Morinda citrifolia, or Indian Mulberry. This is not true
— from one culture to another, the plant is the same.

Though the fruit of the noni tree has a distinctive and not
altogether pleasant aroma, noni fruit was traditionally eaten by
native cultures in Samoa, Fiji, Burma and Australia. In Hawaii
and the Marquesas, noni was a famine food and was also fed to
livestock. More commonly the root and bark of the noni tree were
sources of fabric dyes, a use for which noni remained popular in
Polynesia, Asia and Europe until the 1950s. Depending on the
fixatives with which it was combined, noni dye was used to
produce yellow, red and purple colors. From Italy to India, noni
dye colored carpets, sweaters and turbans.

Historical Medicinal Uses Of Noni
In traditional plant-based medicine, the fruit, flower, leaves, bark
and root of Morinda citrifolia have all been used for diverse
medicinal purposes. In Polynesia, noni leaves have a history of
topical use in poultices, and when mixed with oil, for the
treatment of rheumatic pain, inflammation, neuralgia, ulcers,
gout, cough and cold, boils and ringworm. In Hawaii, noni fruit
was crushed and mixed with other plants including awapuhi
(Zingiber zerumbet) and awa (Piper methysticum), and applied
to bruises, sprains and swollen limbs. The leaves of the tree
were also mashed with other plants and applied to deep
wounds.

In traditional medicine, noni fruit was used relatively little
compared with other parts of the plant but in Hawaii, a digestive
tonic was made by combining crushed noni fruit with cane juice..
By the 1930s noni fruit was used more widely for internal
purposes, including intestinal worms, weakness and respiratory
disorders. Since that time the juice of the ripe fruit has become
increasingly popular as a folk remedy purported to stabilize
blood sugar in cases of adult diabetes. However, despite some
claims made by manufacturers there is no scientific evidence
that noni helps maintain blood sugar levels.

Commercial Formulation of Noni
Most people cannot obtain fresh fermented ripe noni juice. So
how can noni be translated effectively into shelf-stable dietary
supplements that work far away from the islands? The five
enemies of all natural products are heat, light, air, moisture and
time. Any noni preparation process must minimize these factors,
because the volatile constituents are unstable and are easily
minimized or destroyed. While drying noni fruit yields a material
that can be powdered and put into dietary supplements, this
process subjects the fruit to all five destructive factors. Bottled
noni juices undergoes pasteurization to eliminate microbial
contamination but the pasteurization reduces volatile
constituents.

At present the processing method most likely to yield a beneficial
noni fruit product is lyophilization or freeze-drying. Lyophilization
is widely employed in the pharmaceutical industry to stabilize
drugs and extend the lifetime of their potency. The lyophilization
process is a stabilizing procedure in which a substance is first
frozen and then is dried by sublimation and desorption,
respectively, in order to destroy any negative biological activity or
chemical reactions. This process avoids the five destructive
factors and produced a stable material that retains a greater
concentration of active, volatile constituents.

False Health Claims Related To Noni
Although Polynesians traditionally used the entire noni plant, it is
the fruit that is gaining popularity in today's herbal market. Either
dried and crushed, juiced and bottled, or freeze-dried, noni fruit
is being touted as a veritable cure-all, useful in mitigating
diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, headaches, arthritis,
and a host of degenerative diseases. Multi level marketers have
had a field day with noni, and this has both stimulated market
demand, and made a chaos of what is actually known about the
fruit. The Internet is full of sites that make false, misleading and
exaggerated claims for noni, including claims that noni fruit has
been used internally as a cure-all for thousands of years. While
the fruit is in fact beneficial to health, many claims currently being
made for noni are unsubstantiated and baseless.

One such claim is about the elusive compound xeronine. In
1985, researcher Ralph Heinicke of the University of Hawaii
declared the existence of a novel substance he dubbed
Xeronine. According to Heinicke, xeronine is a miracle ingredient
responsible for the purported cure-all properties of noni. Also
according to Heinicke, xeronine is almost impossible to detect
because of its microscopic size. While much marketing fever
has been made of Heinicke's findings by some multi-level
marketing groups, his work has yet to be corroborated. In a 1999
review of noni in Economic Botany, the authors dismissed
Heinicke's claims as suspect. No independent laboratory has
identified or quantified xeronine in any noni product.

Noni's Bright Future
Considering the positive discoveries made with noni fruit thus
far, there is excellent reason to anticipate that further studies will
prove the fruit and its preparations beneficial to health in
numerous ways. Noni is a valuable medicinal plant. And it is
likely to become an increasingly sought-after dietary
supplement. Yet we have a great deal more to learn about what
the plant contains and how it works. Further phytochemical
investigations into noni will likely lead to the discovery of other
compounds. Additional biological activity studies will provide
better information about how these agents work in living
organisms and the human body. Until more clinical trials are
conducted for noni, it is reasonable for manufacturers to market
noni as a safe digestive cleansing product, a supplement for
maintaining healthy joints and improving overall vitality and
well-being.

Noni is a highly regarded folk remedy that appears to be
genuinely beneficial to health in numerous ways. Stripped of
hype and mumbo-jumbo, and approached with intelligence and
good science, noni may prove to be one of the more diversely
valuable agents in nature's medicine chest, and an enduring
dietary supplement which serves the health needs of many.


References

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