Choko

Choko is a very successful plant for us providing lots of pear shaped and sized fruits over the past few months. It is starting to die back now (late winter)

binomial name : Sechium edule
common name : Choko or Chayote

There are several varieties - the common is green but we have a white variety courtesy of another member of our garden club - Tamborine Sustainable Gardeners Society. One of the benefits of belonging to a garden club is the sharing of plants and knowledge. We have acquired our Yakon, Water chestnuts and Queensland Arrowroot this way.

This plant has come from Central America and no doubt has been eaten by humans for a long time. There is an excellent resource on the Internet about the foods of the Incas that I would recommend - google : Lost crops of the Incas will find it ok. It is really surprising how many of our foods have come from Central and South America ( Yakon and Arrowroot are included). This is a free online book and I found it so interesting I purchased it from Amazon.

Choko has had a bad reputation in Australia and New Zealand - as kids we had to eat it and most found the taste disagreeable and indeed today we meet people who refuse to eat it as adults. We don't mind the taste , it is really quite bland and as we have had excess fruit we have bottled some with apple juice and orange juice as the flesh of it takes up flavours from other sources. Anne has made choko pie with apple flavour and served it up to guests who did not realise it was not apple. We ate it tonight as a boiled vegetable along with pumpkin and some salad greens

The leaves and roots are eaten in other parts of the world (asia) but we have only eaten the fruit.

Pubmed search (search term Sechium edule)

One abstract indicated that an extract of this plant had a vasodilatory effect ( that would result in blood pressure lowering ) and anti-oxidant activity (abstract 1). This blood pressure lowering effect was confirmed in another study ( abstract 14) Another abstract (number6) was difficult to understand but it seems to imply that Choko has a beneficial effect on the metabolic byproducts of diabetes that cause the complications seen in that disease.

Other internet sites (wiki) indicate that it contains Vit C and some amino acids. How much per serve of 100gm I am unable to find. There is about 80kJ/serve.

Conclusion - this plant grows well for us and we will keep it going! It is tough and non demanding although it does die right back in summer here

Tom