Chemical Composition and Quantitative Elemental Investigation of Bitter Melon

Researchers have found many interesting properties of bitter melon and therefore attracted many others on its studies. Bitter melon belongs to cucurbitacea family and momordica genus. Bitter melon is used for human consumption all over the world in different forms such as a vegetable and /or medicine. Some of the research work has been done on the fruits, its seeds and leaves but the other parts such as tissues has not been studied. The present study is an extensive investigation of the quantitative elements for Ca, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, Pb, Zn, K, N, and P of the fruit- skin, fruit-flesh, fruit-seed, tissue skin, leaf and root of bitter melon for the first time using flame atomic absorption spectrometry. The results show a quite good variation of the concentration of the elements in different part of the fruit and the tissue.