Nutritional composition of winged bean, Psophocarpus tetragonolobus (L) DeCandole

Eighteen varieties of Winged bean, Psophocarpus tetragonolobus (L) OeCandole seeds were evaluated for proximate composition. The range of proximate principles of these test varieties were as follows: moisture, 8.5 to 10.1 per cent; ash, 3.4 to 4.8 per cent; fibre, 10.8 to 12.9 per cent; protein, 33.4 to 39.7 per cent; fat, 16.5 to 20.6 per cent; carbohydrates, 25.1 to 33.1 per cent and energy value, 417.5 to 440.7 Kcal on dry weight basis. It was possible to group these varieties into eight clusters, based on nutritional characteristic of seeds, by using Mahalanobis D2 statistics and canonical variate analysis. It was also observed that protein and fat contributed maximum in creating diversity among these varieties.