Niger Seed

Guizotia abyssinica is an erect annual herb up to about 1.5 metres tall with bright yellow daisy-like flowers. The seed heads contain slender, black, slightly curved seeds about 4 to 5 millimetres long with a glossy surface. The seeds contain a high percentage of oil that has a nutty, sweet flavour reminiscent of sesame or sunflower. The plant is hardy and tolerates poor soils and waterlogging better than many oilseed crops, so it is often grown on marginal land. The spelling nyjer was introduced as a trade name to avoid confusion with the country Niger, even though the name has nothing to do with that country.

Niger seed originated in the highlands of Ethiopia and neighbouring parts of East Africa, where it has been grown for thousands of years and is called noug. It was carried to India in antiquity, and today India is the largest producer, followed by Ethiopia. In India the crop is known as ramtil or kala til and is grown by small farmers in states such as Odisha, Maharashtra and Karnataka. It is sown at the end of the monsoon season and harvested a few months later.

The plant is regarded as one of the old cultivated oilseeds of the Ethiopian highlands, and it has long been pressed for cooking oil there. Seeds were taken across the Indian Ocean to the Indian subcontinent, where they were adopted and became a minor oilseed crop that provided cooking oil, lamp oil and an ingredient in traditional foods.

In the twentieth century niger seed also became popular as bird food in North America and Europe, giving rise to large-scale export from Ethiopia and India. Imported seed is generally heat-treated to prevent the spread of weeds such as dodder. Niger oil is still used in Ethiopia for cooking, in religious foods and for cosmetics, but production has not grown as fast as for major oilseeds like sunflower and soybean.

In Ethiopia the roasted seeds are ground to a paste and made into a sauce or added to flatbreads and mixed with spices such as chilli. The seeds are also eaten whole in snacks and sweets in parts of India, sometimes made into chutney powders with chilli and garlic. The oil is used for cooking, frying and in pickles, and also as a base for soap and paints. The pressed seed cake is used as animal feed. In bird feeding, niger seed is offered in specialised tube feeders with tiny ports.

Niger seed is an energy-dense seed with a high proportion of polyunsaturated fat, mainly linoleic acid, along with protein, fibre and minerals. Values vary with variety and growing conditions, and figures given here are approximate. It has historically been a useful local source of dietary fat and calories in Ethiopia and India. There are few clinical studies on its health effects in people, so it is best considered as a traditional food and not a supplement.