Abstract

A NEED FOR CULTIVATION OF ENDANGERED MEDICINAL PLANTS USING HORTICULTURE TECHNIQUES

Dr. Chitrapu Poornasrijyotsna*

ABSTRACT

Globalization has brought with it opportunities and challenges in all business sectors. Government of India has identified medicinal plants as one of the sectors that can make India a global leader in the 21'r century owing to the treasure of 8000 medicinal that can provide large number of consumer products with national and international demand. The demand for medicinal plants and chemicals derived from them is increasing globally coupled with use of traditional systems of medicine in industrially developed countries. As a result, the medicinal plants exports from India have increased from Rs. 450 crores (199-2000) few years ago to over Rs. 1500 crores now. The world Health Organization estimated that by the year 2050 trade in plant based drugs will reach US $ 5 trillion (Rs. 245 lakh crores). Due to the tremendous global demand for medicinal plants, they are indiscriminately collected from their natural habitats (mostly forest areas) resulting in their dwindling availability and seriously threatening their survival. A number of lndian medicinal plants have become endangered, threatened and their occurrence has become rear forcing Government of India to ban exports of some of these plants. Global and Indian demand has provided excellent opportunity for scientifically cultivating economically important medicinal plants by using various new cultivation techniques. To promote cultivation of medicinal plants, number of high yielding varieties, worked out agro-technologies and processing technologies have been developed. Profitable cultivation of medicinal plants can be practiced by farmers/ companies/ entrepreneurs along with traditional agricultural horticultural crops as sole crops, intercrops, sequential crops etc. They can be profitably intercropped in plantation.

Keywords: Ayurveda, Scion, Rootstock, Interstock.