Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
Siriyanangai (Andrographis paniculata) is very bitter. Alagamma hid that well, when she gave a leaf to this correspondent to chew. The bile rose, and the bitterness lingered for an hour. "It shows you have not been bitten by a snake in the last one hour,' remarked Alagamma. A person bitten …
Is traditional medicine the answer to the healthcare needs of the state? In rural areas, traditional medicine is the major healthcare option. It is well respected, as western medicine system is non-existent in far-flung places. Even otherwise, traditional and modern practitioners participate equally in providing healthcare. Our medicines are highly …
Sri Lanka has proposed to draft a bill to protect the traditional knowledge associated with medicinal plants. Initiated by the country's ministry of indigenous medicine, the proposed legislation will be drafted by the National Intellectual Property Organisation of Sri Lanka (NIPOS). According to NIPOS, the bill is intended to devise …
in order to stem the sudden decline in the numbers of medicinal plants in Jammu and Kashmir (j&k;), the state government recently repealed the Kuth Act. The move is expected to encourage local people to cultivate medicinal and aromatic plants on their own land, with technical know-how being provided by …
Under the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme in south-western West Bengal, regenerating deciduous forests are being managed for the extraction of numerous plant products, both for commercial benefits and subsistence-level use, on a large scale. However, there has been little serious evaluation of the long-term biological sustainability of forest produce …
here’s how a small shrub can root out a huge problem. Scientists from the Desert Medicine Research Centre, Jodhpur, have found that the Indian nightshade (Solanum xanthocarpum) is fatal for three species of malaria vectors. The extracts of the fruit are 16 times more potent than those of the roots …
South Africa's indigenous forests are severely threatened by gatherers of medicinal plants who pay scant attention to conservation practices. Michael Peter, director of the country's Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF), says that commercial harvesters
Sri Lanka has derived a sure-fire formula for reducing drug prices and curbing the nation's medicine import bill. At a recent seminar, health experts recommended that the island nation import only about 500 essential drugs instead of the more than 8000 currently allowed into the country. The specialists averred that …
There was a time when Payinthulasi, a 40-year old herb gatherer of village Utchananthal in Virudunagar district of Tamil Nadu, had to trudge to the towns of Virudunagar and Madurai to sell her
• India has 16,000 recorded plant species. About 3,000 of these yield minor forest produce (MFP). • Nearly 500 million people living in and around forests in India depend on MFP for sustenance and as a supplement to their income • Studies in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Bihar …
indian scientists have digitally mapped rich flora spread over an area of about 84,000 square kilometres of thick forest. The first phase of this exercise was conducted in the biodiversity hotspots of the northeast, western Himalaya and Western Ghats with the aid of state-of-the-art satellite technology. The digital mapping project …
Recently, researcher P P Dhyani carried out a successful revival of part of a religious forest that existed at Badrinath. He undertook to rehabilitate the badrivan (sacred grove) around the holy shrine of Badrinath Dham by planting saplings of tree species that originally grew there. These include Bhojpatra (Betula utilis), …
Kalahandi: A Planet of Herbs o Director: Amarendra Kishore o 28 minutes o English/Hindi Kalahandi district in Orissa often hits the news, but for all the wrong reasons; hunger, poverty and mass migration to other states chief among them. To rescue the villagers from penury and provide them a dignified …
few people outside of the western coastal regions of southern India would have heard of kokum. Perhaps visitors to the sunny beaches of Goa remember being served a large glass of a refreshing, tangy drink after a heavy meal. Meant to be an aid to the digestive process, this delicious …
herbs prove to be cheap and effective remedies for kala azar (visceral leishmaniasis). This has been found out during studies conducted by researchers from Patna-based Balaji Utthan Sansthan. The find is important, as most people affected by the disease cannot afford to buy drugs. Ninety per cent of the worldwide …
medicines containing herbal remedy kava will be banned in the uk from January 13. The clampdown stems from research which shows that kava (Piper methysticum) can cause liver failure in rare cases. The herb is a member of the pepper family, which grows across the South Pacific. The root extract …
in many parts of Ethiopia, traditional healers are tackling malaria quite easily with the help of a few medicinal plants. This was found during a study, carried out by researchers from Germany-based Martin Luther University. A total of 44 traditional healers were studied from two areas in Ethiopia
Kuttimathan's search for sustainable development started way back in 1987, when he started work as a guide for scientists from Kerala's Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (tbgri) in Agasthyar Hills. He informed these scientists about the many secrets of the herb Trichopus zeylanicus, known in local parlance as aarogyapacha. …
The German ban on the import of Indian textiles containing azo-dyes, said to leech out carcinogenic amines, sent shockwaves through the Indian handloom industry. But this proved to be instrumental in the reinvension of India's ancient knowledge of eco-friendly natural dyes. Mudapathi Balakrishnan, a textile trader in Kannur, Kerala, was …
Genetic resources and livelihoods across the Asia-Pacific region are being destroyed due to commercialisation of plant genes by transnational companies and national governments. This has been observed in a report compiled by Genetic Resources Action International (grain), a Barcelona-based group, and Kalpvriksha, an Indian environmental organisation. The document warns that …
