Amaranth Grain in Xiengkhouang, Laos

Update July 30, 2009: The grain mentioned in paragraph 3 in Vieng village turned out to be sorghum, not grain amaranth. However, I have heard enough anecdotal accounts of amaranth grain use in Laos that I am hopeful we can promote it successfully. I’ve changed references to amaranth below and moved the sorghum pictures to a new album.

Amaranth is a highly nutritious grain that is being promoted by CRWRC in East Africa as a nutritional supplement for children and adults. It has a high-quality protein content, and is high in calcium, iron, lysine, and folic acid. ECHO is also a major resource and promotion center for amaranth. Amaranth originates in Mexico, where it was used by the Maya in religious ceremonies. Cultivation was prohibited by the Spanish priests for this reason, and it mostly disappeared from diets until people began to take interest again in the 70s-now.

Amaranth in Xiengkhouang, Laos

Tom Post has been the major promoter of amaranth within CRWRC since the late 90s in partnership with Dick Dugger and Partners Worldwide. They produced a video about amaranth planting, harvesting, cooking, and health benefits. Tom Post gave me some seeds over a year ago to test in Xiengkhouang but since no one had shown any interest yet, I waited.

Hmong people in Laos have traditionally grown amaranth as a vegetable crop: they eat the leaves in soups and stir fries. I had never heard of anyone eating the amaranth grain until this week, when I came across a woman threshing purple grain amaranth sorghum in Vieng village, Kham district, Xiengkhouang province. According to Rick Burnette, this is the first confirmed SE Asia case of grain amaranth that he’s heard of. Here’s a photo album of amaranth in Laos, which I will continue to update with new pictures. It has pictures of purple amaranth that I saw last year in Khanghong, and the grain amaranth threshing in Vieng.

The Hmong woman who was threshing the amaranth sorghum said they ate it steamed and boiled, after having threshed, winnowed, and crushed the seeds. I took the opportunity to share with the small crowd that gathered about the benefits of eating amaranth, especially for children and mothers. I said that children should eat a little bit every day, about 20 grams or 3 spoonfuls. I congratulated the woman for her good practice and encouraged her to continue eating amaranth sorghum. I am excited and encouraged that some Hmong people already use grain amaranth, because that means it won’t be difficult to spread the word about its nutritional benefits and get families to plant it for eating.

Later I discussed my idea of promoting amaranth as an ag/health activity in the villages with an agriculture coworker, a village health volunteer, and the village leader. They were excited when I told them that I had some grain amaranth seed from another country and asked me to share some. Unfortunately, I have too little to share now until we plant it to produce seeds for giving to villagers.

Since then I’ve been talking about amaranth with anyone who is interested around my office. Hopefully we’ll get enough momentum rolling to begin a planting trial of amaranth this August. I had been planning to do a small one anyway, but it would be best if we could plant all the seed I have and grow enough seed to give out next year. I’ll talk with the Ag team about it on Monday, and perhaps we’ll look at the amaranth video together.

Traditionally Hmong people plant amaranth in April-June, but the heavy rains in July-August aren’t ideal for harvesting the seeds (although they are good leaf producers in the summer). Tom Post thinks that in SE Asia monsoon climates, amaranth could be planted one month before the end of the rains and it should mature before it gets too cold in December (when we occasionally have frosts). I will post about our amaranth trial on my blog if we do it.

Amaranth resources:

ECHO Technical Note on Amaranth: Grain and Vegetable Types (529KB PDF)

Amaranth in the EDN 100: Underutilized Food Plants

Amaranth Selections – a three page article on Amaranth

Amaranth seeds – at ECHO’s amazing seed bank – note that the ECHO Asia office in Chiang Mai may also have seeds.

Search the PROTA Database for “amaranth” to see detailed information on each variety

Names for Amaranth from the Asian Vegetables Thesaurus:

English:	amaranthus, Chinese spinach, edible amaranth, wild blite, careless weed
Arabic:	napat orguani
Chinese:	hin tsoi, een choy, xian cai, yin choi
Danish:	amarant
Dutch:	amarant
Filipino:	kulitis
French:	amaranthe, amarante
German:	Amarant, Fuchsschwanz
Hindi:	chaulai sag, ram dana, lal sag, rajgira, chuamarsa, ganhar, kalgaghasa
Indonesian:	bayam, selasih, bayem, abang, senggang bener
Italian:	amaranto
Japanese:	santousai
Malay:	bayam
Portuguese:	amarantos, bredos, carurú
Spanish:	amaranis, bledos, blancos
Thai:	phak khom
Vietnamese:	rau dên