Screening Global Challenges And Prospects Facing Medicinal And Aromatic Plants

This review summarizes the difficulties and problems facing MAPs as well as recommendations of overcoming challenge, and brings together the main issues relating to this very important subject. The issues must be addressed in order to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of the medicinal plants resource. Interest in medicinal and aromatic plants MAPs as a re-emerging health aid has been fuelled by the rising costs of prescription drugs in the maintenance of personal health and well-being, and the bioprospecting of new plant-derived drugs. Vacuum is likely to occur in the supply of raw plant materials that are being over-exploited by the pharmaceutical industry as well as the traditional practitioners. Besides, the major challenges for sustainable wild collection include: lack of knowledge about sustainable harvest rates and practices, undefined land use rights and lack of legislative and policy guidance. In situ conservation of these resources, however, alone cannot meet the ever increasing demand of pharmaceutical industry. Many signs reveal that MAPs are gradually facing extinction. They are: i People walk long distances to collect them. ii Some crpos are no longer found. iii What used to be a thick forest of diverse plant species is reduced to bush and areas that have floral fast disappearing. iv Many MAPs are not maturing and seeding because the young plants are being harvested before they mature. Hence, It is necessary to initiate systematic cultivation of medicinal plants in order to conserve biodiversity and protect endangered species. Efforts are also required to suggest appropriate cropping patterns for the incorporation of these plants into the conventional agricultural and forestry cropping systems. In order to initiate systematic cultivation of MAPs high yielding varieties have to be selected. It is therefore necessary to collect, conserve and evaluate germplasm and to develop agro technologies for wild crops with potential for farming. Sometimes high yielding varieties have also to be developed by selective breeding or clonal micro-propagation. The selected propagation materials have to be distributed to the cultivators either through nurseries or seed banks. Identifying the conservation benefits and costs of the different production systems for MAPs should help guide policies as to whether species conservation should take place in nature or the nursery, or both