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Lecture on Methodology for field identification of plants

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31 Mar 19
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Lecture on Methodology for field identification of plants

Udaipur, Correct identification of plants are essential for scientific validation of any plant drug and for identification purpose, prior knowledge about relevant flora is also necessary. This was expressed by Dr. Vartika Jain who is working as Assistant Professor, Department of Botany, Govt. Meera Girls' College, Udaipur in a three day Re-orientation training program of Ayurvedic Medical Officers organized at RTDC Hotel Kajri on Wednesday as a Trainer. She was introduced to participants by Dr. B.L. Jain.

Dr. Vartika explained difference between floristic, ethnobotanical and medicinal plant survey and gave important clues for preliminary identification of plants in a field visit. She also explained the technique to properly preserve a plant for making a herbarium specimen and which are the important indexed Herbaria of country where the preserved plant specimen could be submitted and identified correctly. She emphasized on keeping the voucher specimen of a plant/herbal drug before starting any scientific laboratory research on the plant. Various methodologies to document the medicinal importance of the plant species as given by local folk were also explained to participants in detail. 

Later Dr. Vartika also gave information about various folk medicinal uses of some local plants growing in surroundings of Udaipur for example Guduchi, Adusa, Aak, Ghav-patti, Cholai etc. along with their pictorial presentation and raised questions on preserving indigenous medicinal herbs of city. Further, she proudly informed about the First Indian Book selected for Mary. W. Klinger Award Finalist 2017-18 by prestigious Society for Economic Botany, USA which is 'Compendium of Indian Folk Medicine and Ethnobotany' 'containing concise information on ethnobotany of about 4600 plant species growing in India and authored by her and Dr. S. K. Jain.

There were 40 Ayurvedic Medical Officers from all over Rajasthan who attended the course and asked their queries about difference between collection of fresh/dry plant part, some suitable areas of Rajasthan for collection of particular medicinal plants etc. and Dr. Jain served them with proper answers. In the end, Dr. P.L. Choubisa extended her heartfelt thanks to her for delivering lecture on such an important topic relevant in present context when plant diversity is depleting rapidly and experts in plant identification are also rare.


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