G. P. Rao – författare

There is no Man on this Earth who is incompetent and there is no plant which is of no Medicinal use. Where everything is present, infact, a man to manage them properly is seldom available. During the past decade, demand for medicinal plants and its products as well as traditional health system attracted the worldwide interest. India, being the Botanical Garden and Treasure house of Biodiversity with its diverse ecological conditions, rich ethnic diversity and a strong traditional knowledge base, accounts for 45000 plant species , out of which more than 8000 species are used in some 10000 herbal drug formulations. Ninety percent of the herbal industry's requirement is taken out from the forests, resulting into their destruction. There is no reliable assessment to the volume or value of the herb-related trade in India, but the conservatives put the quantity of dry raw material collected at 0.5 million tons each year. The global plant based drug is projected between US $ 30 and 60 billion with a 7% annual growth rate but, India has only a 2.5% share in it. Even so, there is a positive realization that the demand is fast outstripping supply, putting an unreasonable pressure on our wild phytoresources. this has already placed certain species at risk and other will soon follow, if immediate corrective measures are not taken. Conservation of Medicinal plants has to be viewed not as an end in itself but as a means to enhance; the conservation and cultivation of our precious biowealth for sustainable utilization an in ensuring equitable sharing of the benefits derived from the use of Biodiversity. Our knowledge about the aforesaid is still inadequate and needs further extensive and intensive investigations, so as we have full spectrum at hand. This edited book, containing most of the aspects related with medicinal plants, would provide a compiled literature on biodiversity, agro technique, pathological problems, indigenous knowledge base, pharmacology, photochemisty, biotechnology and marketing patterns etc. which be really useful for growers, technologists and industry people involved in medicinal plant research. ISBN 8190228994 Rs. 3950 US $ 95.00