CHAPTER ONE
- INTRODUCTION
In Africa, indigenous vegetables remain popular in rural areas where they are often consider to be more nutritive than exotic vegetables Telfiaria occidentalis commonly called fluted pumpkin, fluted gourd is tropical vine grown in west Africa as a leaf vegetable and for its edible seeds and is highly reputed in traditional medicine (Badifi et al., 1995). The common names for the plant include fluted gourd, fluted pumpkin and ugwu Telfairia occidentalis is a member of the curcubitaceae family and is indigenous to Southern Nigeria (Akorada, 1990). There is paucity of info on the phytochemical constituents of the leaf of 70, however it has been reported that the leaf contain tannins, flavoroids, alakaloid, saponins, steroid, anthraquinines (Eseyinet al., 2000; Oboli ,2006).
