Endangered Medicinal Plants & Biotechnological Conservation

This study deals with over two hundred medicinal plants of ethnobotanical importance, used by the village doctors especially village Kavirajs in Barind Tract, Bangladesh for medicinal purposes. This study aims at the identification of endangered medicinal plants by questionnaire survey and also preservation and perpetuation of this knowledge of the local plants possessing medicinal properties for the benefit and fruitful investigation on modern scientific lines. Suppliers of the local Ayurvedic, Unani and Homeopathic drug manufacturers collect the medicinal plants from their wild nature habitats. Their process of collection sometimes has so indiscriminately exploited many important medicinal plants are now under the threat of extinction. It was necessary to develop the tissue culture protocols for all of these identified endangered medicinal plants but considering volume of work and time limitation, three medicinal plants (Aristolochia indica, Hemidesmus indicus, and Withania somnifera) are selected for tissue culture and initiative attempts are taken to develop the avenue for the production of artificial seeds by encapsulating highly meristematic zone.