Cultivation and conservation of underutilized medicinal and agricultural plants in India

Abstract

In the current era, the increased demand of healthy food rich in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals and those having therapeutic value has led to over-exploitation of major agricultural and medicinal plants. This overburden can be reduced by an efficient utilization of underutilized plants with nutritional and medicinal importance. These underutilized plants are neglected or undervalued ‘minor’ crops having low production and sale. These less documented and less studied group of underutilized plants are considered as a rich source of various phytochemicals and secondary metabolites having bioactive compounds. These underutilized wild herbs that have not gained much attention from commercial as well as scientific community were selected for the present study. The present review elucidates the significance of these plants and recent biotechnological methods to conserve them. The present study on such food and medically important herbs would contribute in a wide recognition of their benefits for our society.

Production and marketing of medicinal and aromatic plants: prospects and constraints-A review

“… Cultivation of Aloe vera plant is economically attractive (Bali et al, 2015).  Diverse flora can use in local medicinal plants as medicine or as an additional income source for local livelihoods (Yadav et al, 2018;Gupta et al, 2022;Handa, 2022)  Collection, primary processing and selling of medicinal plants contribute to the cash income of the poor men and women people (Gaurav et al, 2018).  Good agricultural practices (GAP) for medicinal plants are important to regulate the quality and production of the plants and many countries are implementing it (Singh et al, 2021;Bishtet al, 2022).…”

Cultivation of medicinal plants using hydroponic system

“…Therefore, there is an urgent need to conserve them and develop sustainable cultivation techniques. 12 However, conventional cultivation practices result in large fluctuations in both the amount of biomass produced and concentrations of active constituents. Hydroponic technology may be applied to produce high-quality plant material all year round using appropriate nutrient solutions rather than soil, where essential plant nutrients are dissolved in water for growing plants.…”