Found in almost all Indian households, yellow turmeric is an indispensable spice used in everyday cooking. But have you heard about white turmeric?

Often confused with each other, white turmeric is light yellow inside and white towards the periphery. Its tubers are thick, cylindrical, and branched.

It tastes bitterer than yellow turmeric and has a morphological resemblance to ginger. It smells like mango, and therefore, is also known as amba haldi or mango turmeric.

Coming from a family of Zingiberaceae, which consists of noteworthy medicinal plants, white turmeric is said to have a number of therapeutic properties.

It has a wide range of chemical constituents including essential oil, saponins, resins, flavonoids, and curcumin.

Due to its antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, anticarcinogenic, and anti-inflammatory properties, white turmeric can be used for a variety of purposes.

Mango ginger rhizome can be used in the manufacture of pickles, culinary preparations, and salads, as a source of raw mango flavour for foods.

As per a paper published in the Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine, “Curcumin has been shown to be effective in treating chronic conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, [and] Alzheimer's.”

The paper also mentions its usefulness in treating “common malignancies like colon, stomach, lung, breast, and skin cancers.”

Yet another paper published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Disease notes, “The rhizomes are useful in vitiated conditions of pitta, anorexia, dyspepsia, flatulence, colic, bruises, wounds, chronic ulcers, skin diseases, pruritus, fever, constipations…cough, bronchitis, [and] sprains.”

The paper further says that white turmeric “is useful against inflammation in the mouth, ear, as well as gleet…scabies.”

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