Biomedical Applications of Secondary Metabolites From Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.).

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is a highly nutritious, stress tolerant crop which remains underutilized. Recently it gained attention as an alternative food and agricultural resource. The mother grain of the Incans, this crop was used to feed Incan soldiers for strength and has continued to be revered as a staple food for improving overall human well-being by the Quechua people of the Andean region of South America. Quinoa contains a variety of phytoecdysteroids, such as 20-hydroxyecdysone (20HE), which has been shown to have anti-diabetic and anabolic effects in mammals. Quinoa extract, containing a complex mixture of ecdysteroids and other secondary metabolites, decreased glucose output from HII4E rat hepatocytes in a dose-dependent manner, suggesting the synergistic role of these bioactive components. We also explored the role of 20HE in protein metabolism in L6 rat myotubes, with implications for muscle building and fitness enhancement in mammals. Lastly, we demonstrated that ecdysteroid content varies across quinoa accessions, leading to future transdisciplinary work to address the role of genotype and environmental conditions on the chemical and biomedical traits of different quinoa varieties through the Global Insitute for BioExploration (GIBEX, www.gibex.org).