Herbs, Medicinal and Aromatic Plants

Various aspects of medicinal plant cultivation includes old philosophies, modern impact of traditional medicines, and methods of assessing the spontaneous flora for industrial utilization, climatic variations, biological assessment, formulation, process technologies, phytochemical research and information sources. Indian herbal Industry is at blooming stage, however cultivation of medicinal plants is not so easy. It is a challenging task because less is known about their seed biology. Much efforts have not been made to search elite specimens and their propagation. There is a need for a scientific approach for propagation of medicinal plants and to collect relevant information regarding agrotechnology, genuine planting material. Economics of field cultivation, high yielding varieties etc.

One has to explore wild medicinal plant species & to bring them under cultivation. Sometimes plants selected from the wild population may be suitable for the cultivation and there is no immediate necessity for any improvement programs in it. Scientific cropping of industrially important medicinal plant is an integrated approach with agricultural and forestry with optimum land and water resources utilization. In India, various medicinal plants are cultivated and domesticated, therefore, International trade is looking to procure medicinal plant materials from India for the production of pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and cosmeticeutical preparations. India is also making efforts for cultivation, collection, characterization, planned hybridzation programs for improvement of the plant species, and conservation medicinal plants restoring their genetic resources, etc for commercial cultivation Plant the breeders of medicinal plant play key role in improvement of medicinal plants because he cares for stable produce, uniform plant growth and maturity, economic to grow and of good quality. Indian farmers are facing various problems in cultivation of medicinal plants because of lack of proper agro-technology, high fees for packages developed by various organizations, lack of reliable and standardized technology package, lack of planting material, market potential and system, cultivated us wild plant, organic farming techniques, etc. Knowledge of post-harvest processing technology of plants for the extraction of chemicals and preparations of active formulation is still needed.

For this purpose one has to take help of research organizations, private institutes, farmers, NGO’s public sector institutes etc. for better technical know-how of cultivation and post-harvest techniques of medicinal plants. Role of women in particular in harvesting most of this forest produce and collective fuel wood is of paramount importance. This has generated income for them and in turn improved quality of their life. The purpose of the present book to gives overall information about general cultivation practices of medicinal plants. Individual plant has also been discussed with its cultivation techniques. Procedure for getting financial aids through various financial agencies has also been mentioned.