Question

How could ethnobotany be beneficial to us in the future?

Answer 1

Ans. Ethanobotany - According to Schultes(1962) ethanobotany is the study of the relationships between the people of a primitive society and plants.

Beneficial future aspects of ethanobotany-

• Ethanobotany provides information regarding the traditional use of plant wealth which can be used in integrated tribal development. Ethanobotany can throw light on certain unknown useful plants that can be used for developing new sources for plant products and agro based industries such as food processing ,extraction of edible and non edible oils,gums etc. For upliftmemt of tribal communities.
• Scope of natural sciences is increasing both in terms of theoretical contribution towards the understanding of plant-human relationships and the practical knowledge of tribal people in medicine, agriculture health and industry.
• During the last few decades, a succession of Wonder drugs( e.g., khelline,artemisin,emetine,reserpine,quinine etc.) have been discovered from plants with rich ethano botanical lore in tribal societies. The isolation of such drugs from plants heralded a new era in the use of plant products in medicines.
• An increasing no. Of scientists,botanists, phytochemists,pharmacologists,anthropologists are now taking interest in researching science of ethnomedicine and related fields. Ethnomedicine is the recent trend of medicine in which the information gathered from the local people about particular plant and its different uses.
• Thus ethanobotany can be a useful tool in field of medicine. Ethnic plants can be divided into following groups on the basis of their uses -

1. Wild edible plants
2. Ethno medicinal plants
3. Fibre and floss yielding plants
4. Oil yielding plants
5. Dye yielding plants
6. Gum and resin yielding plants
7. Timber
8. Tannin yielding plants
9. Ethno toxic and fish poison plants

• Today very less is known about ethnic plants which are used by tribals for food medicines and narcotics. Thus,future perspectives of ethanobotany are very bright.