Medicinal and Aromatic Plants

Medicinal plants are those plants rich in secondary metabolites and are potential sources of drugs. These secondary metabolites include alkaloids, glycosides, coumarins, flavonoids, steroids etc.

These plants form the main base for the manufacture of drugs of Indian systems of medicine (ayurveda, Unani, Siddha) and Homeopathy. These plants are found in various parts of the country in different environmental and climatic conditions. Plants which grow wild in forest regions, classified as minor forest produce, supply a substantial amount of raw material required for the indigenous drug industry.

Importance and scope for cultivation of medicinal plants in India.

1. India is one of the few countries where almost all the known medicinal plants can be cultivated in some part of the country of the other. Among the various plants in great demand in the country and abroad are Opium poppy, tropane alkaloid bearing plants, sapogenin bearing yams, senna, psyllium husk and seeds, cinchona and ipecac.

2. The ancient Indian System of Medicine (ISM) is predominantly a plant-based material medica making use of most of our native plants. It caters to almost the entire rural population of our country mainly because of the scarcity of modern allopathic health care in our villages

3.ISM offers most appropriate or first line therapy against many diseases like jaundice, bronchial asthma, rheumatoid arthiritis, diabetes etc, for which allopathic medicines have as yet no cure. It is well known that most allopathic medicines have as yet no cure. It is well known that most allopathic medicines produce many morbid side-effects. It is for this reason that more and more people in the western societies are showing increasing interest and preference for organic drugs and their preparations.

4. India has about 2,000 species of medicinal plants and a vast geographical area with high production potential and varied agro-climatic conditions. Most of these plants can subsist under stress conditions and are thus suited even for rainfed agriculture. Cultivation of medicinal plants offers considerable scope for rural employment and export for foreign-ex-change earnings.

5. India is already a major exporter of medicinal plants. It is estimated that rupees crores worth of raw materials and drugs from medicinal plants are exported from India. It holds monopoly in the production and export of psyllium and senna and is second largest exporter of Opium latex.

6. Many of the medicinal plants required by the trade are gathered mainly from the wild growth thus depleting the vegetation of its valuable medicinal plant wealth (eg: Rauvolfia, Dioscorea). On account of this practice, many species of medicinal plants in our country have become extinct or endangered. This should be prevented and herbal gardens and gene-banks covering important medicinal plants should be established to conserve them.

Aromatic plants:

Plants which possess essential oils in one or more plant parts.

Essential oils are secreted in oil glands.

Essential oil: Complex mixture of odoriferous steam volatile compounds, which are deposited by plants in sub- cuticular spaces, granular hairs, cell organelles,excretory cavities, canals and heart wood.

Uses of aromatic crops:

1. In food and flavour industry – spices and condiments

2. In perfumery, soap and cosmetics

3. Pharmaceutical and drug industries.

4. To manufacture pesticides, disinfectants due to antifungal, antiseptic and insecticidal properties.

5. In pain industry – as solvents.

6. Distilled wastes are used in manufacture of card boards, cheap paper,

packing material.