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Promoting medicinal plants

Our Bureau

VIJAYAWADA, May 21

GUJARAT Ayurved University, Jamnagar, has undertaken a project to promote awareness about medicinal plants among farmers and make them cultivate the plants on a large scale to meet the needs of the ayurvedic systems as well as to cater to the export requ irements, Dr. P.N.V Kurup, the Vice-chancellor of the university, has said.

In an interview here on Sunday, Dr. Kurup said that in the past the knowledge about medicinal plants was part and parcel of the folklore of rural India and there was no need to promote it. ``There were traditional ayurvedic physicians who imparted such k nowledge and the village folk were able to identify medicinal plants and make use of them. With increasing westernisation, such precious knowledge is lost and nowadays even the rural people are depending on toxic allopathic drugs even for minor ailments, '' he said.

To counter the trend and sensitise the rural people about the locally available medicinal plants, he said, the university had taken up the project to train farmers. ``Initially, we have adopted 15 villages. Our doctors and medical personnel will visit th e villages and train the farmers for 15-20 days and educate them about the locally available medicinal plants. Then, a village-level co-operative will be formed and the farmers will be given the seeds, manure and other inputs to cultivate the plants on a large scale. The university will buy back the produce at market rates for its pharmacy,'' he said.

Dr. Kurup said the university had ambitious plans to cover all the villages in Gujarat in two or three years and the experiment would be successful like the Anand-model milk cooperatives. ``There is immense potential for using these plants not only in th e ayurvedic systems but the other systems as well. There is a vast export potential as well and India, the home of ayurveda, should not lag behind,'' he said.

Dr. Kurup was felicitated by the Academy of Ayurveda.

Dr. K. Hemadri, a botanist who was also felicitated by the academy, said he had discovered 24 medicinal plants in the tribal tracts of Andhra Pradesh and the State Government should take the lead in promoting the cultivation of these plants.