Medicinal And Aromatic Plants: Utilization And Conservation Techniques

Book excerpt: Medicinal and aromac plants (MAPs) are invaluable natural resources of use to human race, without which the survival of human/ animal race is incredible. There is an enormous diversity of plants which are put into medicinal, beauty care and culinary purposes. Culvaon of commercially important medicinal plants is in high demand as the global community is growing towards a green and herbal oriented approach. India as a country has thousands of years old tradional medicinal systems which rely solely on medicinal plants. There is a gradual loss of medicinal plants with the increasing demand of plant derived drugs. Majority of medicinal plants are sll collected from the wild. This doesn't meet the demand and thereby pave ways to adulterants. The over extracon and ignorant acvies cause biodiversity loss. Farm producon of MAPs in these days is extremely vulnerable to underlying climate risk. Sustainable management of these resources requires urgent aenon for environmental stability and improvement of livelihood. New income generang opportunies are opening up for rural populaons and in parcular for small-scale farmers as well as marginal farmers through MAPs culvaon. New generaon are not well aware of the various uses of many plants to which it was put before. Thus there is an urgent need to spread the knowledge and conserve the wild populaons of medicinal plant diversity in various forest areas of India. Considering the importance of the MAPs, an aempt was taken in this edited book to understand and highlight the role of MAPs in livelihood improvement and income generaon through culvaon, conservaon and ulisaon. Most of the chapters in this book dealt with individual medicinal plants in detail. Two chapters have also been included on pests and diseases management of MAPs. Nowadays, IPR issues are more important. One chapter has been included on IPR issues on medicinal plants. A chapter also devoted on value addion of the medicinal plant products.