A.K.Pandey
Forest Research Institute, India
Title: Good Collection/harvesting practices of medicinal plants for resource conservation and quality products
Biography
Biography: A.K.Pandey
Abstract
India has a long tradition of use on herbal medicines and has very rich diversity of medicinal plants. The increasing demand for herbal products has forced the overexploitation and unscientific collection of natural populations of medicinal plants from the forests rendering several species to vulnerable state. Any threat to these valuable resources will not only jeopardize the health of millions of people, but will also affect the livelihoods of resource poor collectors/farmers and communities that depend on them. Since the medicinal plants and their plant parts are used in raw form in the traditional medicines, the important aspects which govern the quality of the drug at initial level are the correct identification of species, optimum stage of harvest and primary processing. This paper gives a brief account on Good collection/harvesting practices of some important medicinal plants like i.e., Aonla (Phyllanthus emblica), Baividang (Embelia tsjeriam-cottam), Baheda (Terminalia bellerica), Gudmar (Gymnema sylvestre), Sarpagandha (Rauvolfia serpentina) and Kalmegh (Andrographis paniculata). Adoption of sustainable harvesting practices at right time of harvest showed positive impact on resource conservation, socio-economic status of community, quality of produce, economic returns and marketing. It is evident from our study that the medicinal plants collected at right time of maturity following sustainable harvesting practices possess better quality in terms of active ingredients concentration. Sustainable harvesting technologies have been standardized for only few species, which are used for large-scale production of phyto-pharmaceuticals. But there is an urgent need to develop suitable technologies for other important plants used for the manufacture of drugs. The technique should be simple which could be easily understood and adopted by the collectors. This will help in avoiding indiscriminate extraction of plant, supply of good quality material to the consumer and enabling the collector in getting a better price of the produce. Sustainable harvest system and effective community managed regulatory mechanism shall be put in place for harvesting of medicinal plants from the wild.