Mucuna seed

Mucuna pruriens is a tropical legume native to Africa and tropical Asia and widely naturalized and cultivated. Its English common names include velvet bean, Bengal velvet bean, Florida velvet bean, Mauritius velvet bean, Yokohama velvet bean, cowage, cowitch, lacuna bean, and Lyon bean. The plant is notorious for the extreme itchiness it produces on particularly with the young foliage and the seed pods. It has agricultural and horticultural value and is used in herbalism.

In many parts of the world Mucuna pruriens is used as an important forage, fallow and green manure crop. Since the plant is a legume, it fixes nitrogen and fertilizes soil. In Indonesia, particularly Java, the beans are eaten and widely known as 'Benguk'. The beans can also be fermented to form a food similar to tempe and known as Benguk tempe or 'tempe Benguk'.

M. pruriens is a widespread fodder plant in the tropics. To that end, the whole plant is fed to animals as silage, dried hay or dried seeds. M. pruriens silage contains 11-23% crude protein, 35-40% crude fiber, and the dried beans 20-35% crude protein. It also has use in the countries of Benin and Vietnam as a biological control for problematic Imperata cylindrica grass. M. pruriens is said to not be invasive outside its cultivated area. However, the plant is invasive within conservation areas of South Florida, where it frequently invades disturbed land and rockland hammock edge habitats. Cooked fresh shoots or beans can also be eaten. The plant contains relatively high (3–7% dry weight) levels of L-DOPA; some people are sensitive to L-DOPA and may experience nausea, vomiting, cramping, arrhythmias, and hypotension. Up to 88% of the L-DOPA can be extracted from M. pruriens by boiling and soaking for approximately 48 hours. The efficiency of the process can be slightly improved by using approximately 0.25-0.50% sodium bicarbonate.The seeds of Mucuna pruriens have been used for treating many dysfunctions in Tibb-e-Unani (Unani Medicine). It is also used in Ayurvedic medicine. The plant and its extracts have been long used in tribal communities as a ist for various snakebites. It has been studied for its effects against bites by Naja spp. (cobra), Echis (Saw scaled viper),] Calloselasma (Malayan Pit viper) and Bangarus (Krait). It has long been used in traditional Ayurvedic Indian medicine in an attempt to treat diseases including Parkinson's disease. It has been investigated in low income regions of the world as an alternative treatment for Parkinson's disease due to its high content of L-dopa. Dried leaves of M. pruriens are sometimes smoked. The seeds of the plant contain about 3.1–6.1% L-DOPA, with trace amounts of serotonin, , and bufotenine. One study using 36 samples of seeds found no tryptamines present. M. pruriens var. prurient has the highest content of L-dopa. An average of 52.11% degradation of L-dopa into damaging quinones and reactive oxygen species was found in seeds of M. prurient varieties.