Sacha Inchi (Plukenetia volubilis L.) is a perennial vine-like plant of the Euphorbiacaea family and  native to Peru and nowadays found throughout tropical South America as well as some Caribbean islands. The term “sacha inchi” usually refers to its edible seeds contained in star shaped pods a little like star anise. It is also known as the sacha peanut, mountain peanut, or Inca peanut.  The Amazonian tribes people especially in Peru have eaten the seeds for centuries. It has been represented within Incan tombs.  

The plant produces star-shaped green fruits producing dark brown seeds. This Inca Peanut could be a potential new food crop. 

The seeds have a nutty, slightly oily flavour on roasting. The protein source is  produced  as a defatted protein meal and obtained via a mechanical, solvent-free, cold pressing. 

The seeds yield a useful amount of protein (27% w/w) and oil (35 to 60% w/w) (Hamaker et al., 2012). About 31 per cent of the total seed protein is a water soluble storage protein similar to albumin. It is basic with an estimated sugar content of 4.8%. It contains all the essential amino acids which makes it a potentially valuable human protein source (Sathe et al., 2002).  The tryptophan content is high (44mg/g of protein) but the phenylalanine content is low at 9 mg/g of protein. Further studies to examine the individual proteins from a protein flour reveal a variety of functional properties worth closer examination (Sathe et al., 2012).

The main lipids are omega-3 fatty acids with some omega-6 and -9 content in the exact proportions useful for most human nutrition.  The oil is used in various functional foods.

Supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO₂) was used to extract fatty acids from both seeds and partially defatted cake (Follegatti-Romero et al., 2009). The seed samples used in this work contained 54.3% oil, of which 50.5% was linoleinc acid (ω-3). The maximum extraction recovery for the seeds as 92% at 400 bar and 60 °C, but on one occasion a recovery of 99.1% oil was obtained when cold pressed extraction was employed, followed by supercritical extraction at 400 bar and 60 °C. The main fatty acids were linolenic acid (C18:3) 50.4%, linoleic acid (C18:2) at 34.1%, oleic acid (C18:1) at 8.41%, palmitic (C16:0) 4.24% and a small amount of gadoleic acid (C20:1) at 0.16%.

A high tocopherol content of about 2–3 g/kg of oil was obtained. The main tocopherols were ∂-Tocopherol (1.25 g/kg of oil) and gamma-Tocopherol (1.14 g/kg).

Uses

Sacha inchi is claimed to be a weight management product whereby it promotes fat loss especially around the stomach or abdominal regions generally.  The research studies are light in this area but other claims have been made that it alleviates depression, reduces cholesterol levels, heart disease and diabetes.

References

Follegatti-Romero, L. A., Piantino, C. R., Grimaldi, R., & Cabral, F. A. (2009). Supercritical CO 2 extraction of omega-3 rich oil from Sacha inchi (Plukenetia volubilis L.) seeds. J. Supercritical Fluids, 49 (3), pp. 323-329

Guillén, M.; Ruiz, A.; Cabo, N.; Chirinos, R.; Pascual, G. 2003. Characterization of Sacha Inchi (Plukenetia volubilis L.) oil by FTIR spectroscopy and 1H NMR. Comparison with linseed oil. J. American Oil Chemists Society. 80 pp. 755–762

Sathe, S.K., Kamaker, B.R., Sze-Tao, K.W.C., Venkatachalam, M. (2002) Isolation, Purification, and Biochemical Characterization of a Novel Water Soluble Protein from Inca Peanut (Plukenetia volubilis L.). J. Agric. Food Chem., 50 (17), pp 4906–4908 DOI: 10.1021/jf020126a