The production of fermented beverages is one of the oldest food processing technologies known to humanity. Fermentation has been utilized for thousands of years as a cost-effective method to diversify diet, preserve food surpluses, enrich the protein, fatty acids, and vitamin content of available foodstuff, enhance innocuity and mitigate possible toxic effects of the raw materials, and decrease time and fuel requirements during food processing (Steinkraus, 2018).

Various fermentation processes are carried out by different types of microorganisms, including bacteria, yeast, and mycelial fungi, either naturally occurring or intentionally added to the starting materials. These microorganisms lead to the production of different types of fermented food (Steinkraus, 1997), among which alcoholic beverages are produced by yeast fermentation of a vast variety of raw materials.

Fermented alcoholic beverages have been highly valued as significant dietary components in numerous civilizations due to their extended shelf-life under ambient conditions, thereby contributing to food security and improving food safety. Along with their role in the human diet, there is extensive documentation of ethnohistorical and ethnographic information fomenting the role of alcoholic fermented beverages in traditional medicine, social life, and rituals (Tamang and Kailasapathy, 2010).

Although the diversity of traditional fermented beverages in Asia, Africa, and Europe has been thoroughly described in dozens of review articles and textbooks (Tamang et al., 2020), the information regarding fermented beverages prepared and consumed by ancient South American populations is not as extensive (Cutler and Cardenas, 1947; Jennings and Bowser, 2019; Barghini, 2020; Dozier and Jennings, 2021; Lasso García et al., 2024). It is worth noting that, although the topic of fermented beverages of Latin America was recently and extensively reviewed (Lasso García et al., 2024), this revision offers no information regarding Chile.

In the Andean regions, including Chile, indigenous people have long made alcoholic beverages, commonly called chichas, using practically all plant-based raw materials, including fruits, grains, starchy tubers, and even mushrooms (Goldstein et al., 2008; Pardo and Pizarro, 2016).

Ethnographical information regarding prehispanic fermented beverages in the Chilean territory has been thoroughly reviewed by Oriana Pardo and José Luis Pizarro (Pardo and Pizarro, 2005; 2016), unravelling of the ritual, religious and social aspects associated with the elaboration and consumption of fermented beverages in prehispanic Chile. The Spanish colonialization marked a turning point that led to the marginalization of traditional Chilean fermented beverages. The introduction of European plant species such as grape and apple, the gradual decline of indigenous communities and the extirpation campaign of the Catholic church against indigenous religious practices were among the principal reasons for the progressive impairment of the traditional practices regarding fermented beverages in Chile (Lacoste et al., 2015; Pardo and Pizarro, 2020).

These traditional beverages are still produced and consumed today, based on empirical knowledge passed down from generation to generation since the prehispanic times (Pardo and Pizarro, 2016). However, the post-colonization marginalization of the Chilean chichas may also be reflected to the current status of scientific knowledge regarding prehispanic fermented beverages. Despite the deep-rooted tradition and social fingerprint of chicha production in Chile and the diligent ethnographical research of Pardo and Pizarro (Pardo and Pizarro, 2005; Pardo and Pizarro, 2016), scientific literature essentially lacks any information regarding the chemistry and potential associated health benefits of these fermented beverages, thus limiting our understanding of past local civilizations and national heritage and also hindering the realization of future perspectives.

An ethnopharmacological perspective in the study of traditional prehispanic fermented beverages, i.e., an inter- and multidisciplinary perspective that will combine the existing knowledge and new research of diverse areas as anthropology, pharmacology, natural product chemistry, toxicology, etc. is considered more than essential in order to surpass present limitations, rescue traditional knowledge and benefit from it. Moreover, although there is no information regarding the chemistry of traditional chichas, it can be expected that the chemical compounds -or some of them-present in the plant raw materials would also be present in the beverages, with or without fermentation-induced transformations. Therefore, the existing scientific knowledge on the chemistry and bioactivity of the plant raw materials, combined or contrasted to traditional medical uses, could possibly mitigate the effects of the lack of respective data on the fermented beverages per se and facilitate the orientation of future research on potential health benefits of the traditional Chilean chichas.

In this regard, the present review aims to provide a comprehensive review of the interdisciplinary information on traditional Chilean fermented beverages, as well as of the currently available scientific data on the phytochemistry and bioactivity of the starting materials used for the elaboration of traditional Chilean chichas.

Literature data on the chemistry and bioactivity of the prehispanic fermented beverages and the raw materials used in Chile for their elaboration were mainly retrieved from digital databases such as SciFinder^®, PubMed^®, and Google Scholar^®, as well as from the scientific journal publishers’ platforms linked with these databases. The search strategy included the scientific name of each raw material without any other keywords or restrictions. All publications in peer-reviewed journals until March 2023 were considered. Since the present review refers to prehispanic fermented beverages of the Chilean territory, chemistry, traditional uses, and bioactivity data regarding species of widespread use in the Andean region (potato (Solanum tuberosum L. [Solanaceae]), quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd. [Chenopodiaceae]) and maize (Zea mays L. [Poaceae]), as well as European species introduced in Chile during the Spanish colony (see Section 3) were not included in the literature review.

Literature data regarding yeast diversity in traditional fermented beverages (see Section 4.1) was retrieved using the same databases and platforms and the same timeframe, applying the keywords “fermented beverage”, “chicha”, “yeast” and restricting the retrieved results to traditional alcoholic fermentation products in South America.

Considering ethnohistorical, ethnographical, anthropological and ethnopharmacological data included in Sections 3, 4, 6, and 7, literature search was based on archaeological evidence, books from Chilean and non-Chilean chroniclers and explorers, as well as modern ethnographic testimonies regarding traditional practices in the past and fermentation traditions that persist in some communities in Chilean territory.

Plant nomenclature has been checked with the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens’ Medicinal Plant Names Services (MPNS, 2021) and The World Flora Online Database (WFO, 2022). Regarding phytochemical data, only secondary metabolites present in the raw materials were considered and they were classified according to their pathway and superclass (Supplementary Table S1) using the NPClassifier tool (Kim et al., 2021), except anthocyanins that are presented as a separate category and not included in the flavonoids superclass, due to their high occurrence in the raw materials. A matrix plot (Figure 2) was employed to visually summarize the occurrence of each phytochemicals’ category per plant raw material. Traditional uses and evidence-based bioactivity data (Supplementary Tables S2, S3) were grouped based on their therapeutic classification according to the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) system, introduced by the World Health Organization (WHO Collaborating Centre for Drug Statistics Methodology, 2023). In the cases of ATC systems for which both traditional and evidence-based bioactivity was reported, a chord diagram was employed to permit the visualization of the relationships between the botanical species and the type of available information (Figure 3). Although not included in the aforementioned systems, evidence-based antioxidant activity was also considered due to its significance and the high number of related research papers.

A wide range of raw materials, including cereals, pseudo-cereals, fruits, and various other plant-derived components, were used for the production of fermented beverages in prehispanic Chile. Specifically, a total of thirty eight starting materials have been reported, including thirty seven plant materials and the fungi of the genus Cyttaria [Cyttariaceae] (Table 1). Plant materials used for the elaboration of prehispanic chichas include species distributed in twenty seven genera and twenty botanical families. The majority of plants belonged to the Fabaceae (n = 5), Anacardiaceae (n = 4), and Myrtaceae (n = 4) botanical families. The recorded species occur as various life forms with the majority being trees (43%) and the remaining occurring as shrubs (30%), herbaceous species (24%),and geophytes (3%).

The majority of the plant species used in prehispanic fermented beverages were wild harvested from mountain forests, wetlands, shrublands, and wastelands, while only a few of them were cultivated, i.e., Chenopodium pallidicaule Aellen [Chenopodiaceae], C. quinoa (Delatorre-Herrera, 2003), S. tuberosum (Spooner et al., 2012), and Z. mays (Ugalde et al., 2021). Among them, the elaboration of fermented beverages from potato (S. tuberosum) tubers, as well as grains of quinoa (C. quinoa and maize (Z. mays L. [Poaceae]) was not characteristic of the Chilean territory but was and remains widespread in the Andean region.

Furthermore, although out of the scope of the present review, it should be highlighted that since the Spanish colony, grains and fruits of introduced species such as European apple (Malus domestica Suckow Borkh. [Rosaceae]), European pear (Pyrus communis L. [Rosaceae]), blackberry (Rubus ulmifolius Schott [Rosaceae]), quince (Cydonia oblonga Mill. [Rosaceae]), linseed (Linum spp. [Linaceae]), wheat (Triticum spp. [Poaceae]), and barley (Hordeum vulgare L. [Poaceae]) were used to make fermented drinks (Gay, 1865; de Moraleda, 1888; Cárdenas Álvarez and Villagrán, 2005; Pardo and Pizarro, 2005; Pardo and Pizarro, 2013; Pardo and Pizarro, 2016).

Regarding the geographical distribution of plant raw materials and, hence, the range of the respective fermented beverages, those can be divided in three zones, i.e., North (Regions of Arica and Parinacota, Tarapacá, Antofagasta, Atacama, and Coquimbo), Center (Metropolitan Region of Santiago and Regions of Valparaíso, Libertador Bernardo O’ Higgins, Maule, and Ñuble), and South (Regions of Biobío, Araucanía, Los Ríos, Los Lagos, Aisén, and Magallanes). Among those zones, the variety of raw materials used for the elaboration of fermented beverages was limited to the use of cereal grains and legume pods and fruits in dry regions in Northern Chile, while the climatic conditions in the central and southern zones of Chile permitted the use of a much wider variety of plant species and parts (Table 1; Figure 1).

Scientific literature provides rather limited information on the chemical composition of Chilean traditional fermented beverages. To our knowledge, there is only one study reporting the presence of quercetin, vicenin II, vitexin, and cinnamic acid in beverages of Neltuma alba (Griseb.) C.E.Hughes & G.P.Lewis [Fabaceae] pods after spontaneous fermentation (Rodríguez et al., 2020).

Furthermore, there is a lack of scientific information regarding the chemical composition of several starting materials used for the elaboration of prehispanic fermented beverages, i.e., the rhizomes of A. ligtu; the fruits of A. luma, E. ochreata, L. caustica, M. hastulata, M. sagittifolia (Ortega) Meisn. [Polygonaceae], S. latifolia, Ugni selkirkii (Hook. & Arn.) O. Berg [Myrtaceae]; the grains of Bromus mango É.Desv. [Poaceae]; the pods of Neltuma alpataco (Phil.) C.E.Hughes & G.P.Lewis [Fabaceae] and the sap of J. chilensis.

However, despite the aforementioned limitations, a significant number of compounds have been reported in raw materials used for the preparation of prehispanic chichas in Chile, as presented in summary in Figure 2 and in detail in Supplementary Table S1. Considering only the plant parts used during fermentation, the most abundant chemical group reported in plant starting materials corresponds to molecules resulting from the shikimates and phenylpropanoids synthetic pathway, especially flavonoids and phenylpropanoids. Terpenoids have also been reported in several raw materials, while alkaloids are present to a much lesser extent. Although the type of molecules cannot be directly correlated to specific plant parts and/or botanical families, the presence of a wide spectrum of compounds must be highlighted. Considering that many of these chemical groups have been associated with pharmacological activities and benefits for the human health (Yao et al., 2004; Rao and Rao, 2007; Cox-Georgian et al., 2019; Neelam et al., 2020; Rajput et al., 2022), it is considered essential to further study the phytochemistry of both the raw materials and of the beverages resulting by their fermentation.

Several health benefits have been traditionally attributed to prehispanic fermented beverages, being the most widely reported that of a potent diuretic and, consequently, a remedy to prevent and/or treat kidney and bladder stones (Pardo and Pizarro, 2016). While this health benefit has been well documented for all chichas, the fermented beverages of several plant raw materials have been correlated with additional medicinal uses such as aperitives, astringents, refrigerants, stomachics, and tonics (Supplementary Table S2). However, scientific evidence only reports the potent in vitro antioxidant effect and the inhibition of COX-2 and iNOS protein expression in RAW 264.7 macrophages in the case of fermented A. chilensis extracts (Wang et al., 2012) and the in vitro antioxidant and anti-lipoperoxidation effects of N. alba extracts after spontaneous fermentation (Rodríguez et al., 2020).

Regarding the thirty four plant raw materials used for the preparation of prehispanic chichas in Chile, i. e., those presented in Table 1 without considering the widely used quinoa, potato, and maize, 60% is widely known and used in the traditional medicine of Chilean indigenous people (Supplementary Table S2). However, scientific literature lacks information on the bioactivity of several plant raw materials used for the elaboration of prehispanic fermented beverages, i.e., the rhizomes of A. ligtu; the fruits of A. luma, E. ochreata, L. caustica, M. hastulata, Muehlenbeckia sagittifolia, S. latifolia, S. polygama (Cav.) Cabrera [Anacardiaceae], U. selkirkii; the grains of B. mango; the pods of N. alpataco and the sap of J. chilensis (Supplementary Table S3).

Conditions related to the digestive tract and to metabolism are those for which there is the highest number of reported traditional uses and evidence-based health benefits (Figure 3A; Supplementary Tables S2, S3). Along with the aforementioned medicinal properties attributed to fermented beverages, a total of sixteen starting materials is associated with traditional uses related to the human alimentary tract, while scientific literature supports similar bioactivity for twelve of the plant raw materials. However, it has to be highlighted that both traditional uses reports and scientific evidence exist for only six plant materials, i.e., the fruits of A. chilensis, B. darwinii, B. microphylla, F. chiloensis, S. molle, and U. molinae (Figure 3A).

Furthermore, there are several traditional uses and scientific evidence related to pathologies of the human nervous system (Figure 3N; Supplementary Tables S2, S3). Seven of the starting materials used for the preparation of prehispanic chichas have been used traditionally as tonics, stimulants, and other remedies for the nervous system, while the existing scientific literature supports this type of bioactivity for equal number of plant materials. However, traditional uses and scientific evidence concur only in the case of two raw materials, i.e., the fruits of A. chilensis, and U. molinae (Figure 3N).

Despite the fact that seven of the examined plant raw materials are traditionally reported as dermatologicals, scientific evidence supports health benefits in the case of skin conditions only for the fruits of A. chilensis (Figure 3D; Supplementary Tables S2, S3).

In the case of health benefits related to pathologies of the human respiratory system (Figure 3R; Supplementary Tables S2, S3), although traditional medicines of the indigenous peoples of Chile have associated them with preparations from the fruits of Berberis microphylla, P. boldus, S. polygama, and G. decorticans, the existing scientific evidence supports the bioactivity related with the respiratory system only for the latter.

In the case of pathologies related to blood and blood-forming organs, there is no concurrence among the three plant materials with known traditional uses (F. chiloensis, Luma apiculata, and Neltuma chilensis) and those for which there is evidence-based reported bioactivity, i.e., Aristotelia chilensis and C. pallidicaule (Figure 3B; Supplementary Tables S2, S3). Similarly, there is no concurrence between the two raw materials traditionally used against pathologies of the cardiovascular system and the six reported in scientific literature to present related health benefits (Figure 3C; Supplementary Tables S2, S3). Furthermore, while the aerial parts of O. glandulosum is the only plant raw material with documented traditional anti-infective uses, there is scientific evidence supporting the bioactivity of A. chilensis, Luma apiculata, chinus molle, and U. molinae fruits (Figure 3J; Supplementary Tables S2, S3). In the case of conditions affecting the sensory organs, only the fruits of F. chiloensis present documented traditional uses, wheres scientific evidence is only available for the fruits of A. chilensis and S. molle (Figure 3S; Supplementary Tables S2, S3).

Interestingly, in the case of pathologies related to the genitourinary system and sex hormones, while there are traditional uses documented for the seeds of Araucaria araucana and the fruits of F. chiloensis, P. boldus, S. latifolia, and S. polygama (Supplementary Table S2), scientific literature does not provide evidence that supports or refutes these uses. Similarly, while traditional knowledge supports the use of the fruits of S. polygama and P. boldus as a remedy for musculoskeletal conditions, the existing scientific literature does not provide any information regarding any of the plant raw materials used for the elaboration of prehispanic chichas in the Chilean territory (Supplementary Table S2).

Regarding hormone-related bioactivity, there is scientific evidence supporting only the goitrogenic effect of Araucaria araucana seed flour (Supplementary Tables S3), while no hormone-related traditional uses are reported for this or any other raw material used for the elaboration of fermented beverages in prehispanic Chile. Similarly, despite the lack of reports on traditional uses, the fruits of A. chilensis, B. microphylla, and S. molle have demonstrated antineoplastic effects (Supplementary Table S3).

Finally, scientific literature supports the antioxidant capacity in vitro, in different cell lines and in vivo models of many raw materials used for the preparation of prehispanic fermented beverages, namely, the seeds of Araucaria araucana; the fruits of A. chilensis, B. darwinii, B. microphylla, F. chiloensis, G. mucronata, G. poeppigii, G. decorticans, G. sphacelata, Luma apiculata, Prumnopitys andina (Poepp. ex Endl.) de Laub. [Podocarpaceae], R. magellanicum, R. geoides, S. molle, and U. molinae; the grains of C. pallidicaule; the fresh aerial parts of O. glandulosum and the pods of N. alba and N. chilensis (Supplementary Table S3). Particularly in the cases of A. chilensis fruits and N. alba pods, an interesting antioxidant potential has also been reported for fermented extracts.

In conclusion, it has to be highlighted that, despite the well-documented traditional uses of the prehispanic fermented beverages and of the plant starting materials, the existing scientific literature that supports or refutes these uses is rather limited. Furthermore, in most cases where bioactivity has been investigated, scientific experimentation has not considered traditional uses and knowledge, stressing the need to enhance the ethnopharmacological aspect in modern research so as to unravel the full health-promoting potential of traditional prehispanic fermented beverages and the related plant raw materials.

Citing the pioneer Professor Bo Holmstedt (1918–2002) one of the main objectives of Ethnopharmacology is “to rescue and document an important cultural heritage before it is lost” (Bruhn and Rivier, 2019). Furthermore, one of the current key topics in ethnopharmacological research is the need to decolonize the field, addressing past misconducts and promoting the protection of traditional knowledge and the fair benefit-sharing as proposed by the Nagoya Protocol (Schultz and Garbe, 2023). Given the historical journey of the traditional fermented beverages of prehispanic Chile, their marginalization and its consequences both on scientific and social level, the need to fullfill both the aforementioned objectives is nowadays imperative.

Still, the incentive for further researching the chemistry and bioactivity of the traditional Chilean chichas cannot and should not be limited to safeguarding cultural heritage. With the recent surge in interest surrounding fermented foods and emerging evidence highlighting their health-promoting and disease-preventative benefits, there has been a renewed focus on reviving traditional preparations, especially fermented beverages, for local marketing. These efforts aim to capitalize the growing consumer interest in natural, health-promoting products with cultural significance.

In this context, the results obtained from scientific characterization -chemical, microbiological and pharmacological-can provide valuable input for further advancement in understanding these traditional beverages. Moreover, by leveraging traditional medicinal knowledge, we can better understand the bioactive compounds in these beverages and their health-promoting effects. While currently available literature lacks information on the chemistry and bioactivity of traditional prehispanic Chilean chichas, the data reviewed herein regarding the plant raw materials employed reveal a promising potential and stress the need to further investigate these beverages and the traditional knowledge associated to them.