Introduction, Concept and Justification of the project:

Medicinal plants are valuable natural resources which have been used in virtually all cultures. It is estimated that the number of higher plant species used worldwide for medicinal purposes is more than 50,000 (Schippmann et al., 2002). This equates to approximately 20% of the world’s vascular flora and constitutes the biggest spectrum of biodiversity used by people for a specific purpose (Hamilton et al., 2006). In fact, of the total pharmaceutical drug supply available worldwide, only 15% is consumed in developing countries (Lydecker et al., 1992), supporting the much-quoted WHO’s estimate that 80% of people worldwide rely on traditional medicine for their primary healthcare. The majority of these people are in developing countries, where rapid population growth is expected to increase pressures on medicinal plant resources.

In the recent past the role of medicinal plants to cure various ailments has been reinvented. Increasing interest by multinational pharmaceutical companies and domestic manufacturers of herbal-based medicines is contributing significant economic growth of the global medicinal plants sector. However, unsustainable exploitation of medicinal plants has led to the extinction of many plants and many plants are on the verge of extinction.

Internationally, the trade in medicinal plants is estimated to be worth $60 billion per year (World Bank, 2004) increasing at a rate of 7% a year (Koul and Wahab, 2004). However, very little of the raw material to supply this demand is from cultivated sources. Of the 3000 or so species known to be in international trade (Schippmann et al, 2006) there are approximately 900 for which commercial cultivation is underway or in development (Mulliken and Inskipp, 2006). Putting it another way, about 70- 80% of the medicinal plants being traded in the world’s most important range countries for medicinal plants originate from wild-collection (WWF/TRAFFIC Germany, 2002).
In India, of the 17,000 species of higher plants, 7500 are known for medicinal uses (Shiva, 1996). This proportion of medicinal plants is the highest proportion of plants known for their medical purposes in any country of the world for the existing flora of that respective country (Kala et al., 2006). Similar to other parts of world unmindful, reckless and unscientific extraction from wild is also prevalent in the country and more than 95% of the 400 plant species used in preparing medicine by various industries are harvested from wild populations.

Benefit from the projects:

Summary of the work:

References

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Kala, C. P., Dhyani, P. P. & Sajwan, B. S.(2006). Developing the medicinal plants sector in northern India: challenges and opportunities. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 2:32

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