Free Download Ashok K. Jain, "Indian Ethnobotany: Emerging Trends"
English | 2016 | pages: 352 | ISBN: 8172339607 | PDF | 3,9 mb
It is evident from Rgveda and other ancient literature that the Aryans started studying the Indian flora keenly with the intention of finding out the proper utility of plants. At several places in these scriptures, Man-Plant relationship has been mentioned. Ethnobotany, a subject of studying relationship between plants and humans, is an emerging discipline of science. Interest in ethnobotany has increased dramatically in recent years. The search for new medicines by the pharmaceutical industries has turned to plant natural products and to ethnobotanical studies as a first step in bioprospecting and crop improvement. Ethnobotanical studies are making a valuable contribution to the cataloguing of biological diversity and hence to the conservation of endangered ecosystems and the human societies which depend upon them. Till about thirty years ago, ethnobotany was largely, an area of academic pursuit but now has been a source of several applied aspects due to emergence of new ideas from its various disciplines. It is relevant to mention that India is a fertile area for ethnobotanical studies, mainly due to its rich floral diversity, large number of ethnic groups and dependency on bio-resources by a large section of society. Documentation of indigenous wisdom has become, of late, more essential due to the structure of the laws pertaining to patents and the increased awareness about practices of biopiracy.