AHSI to focus on medicinal herbs

The Agri-Horticulture Society of India (AHSI) has taken up a project to propagate medicinal plants to save them from extinction.

Unabated exploitation of the plants, mostly by pharmaceutical companies, had made the some of the commonly-found herbs like Swertia Chirata (commonly known as Chirata) and Gymnema Sylvestris (commonly known as Gurmar and used to to treat diabetes) scarce, said S K Basu, council member, AHSI.

The society was planning the propagation of endangered plants through methods like seed germination and vegetation, in its tissue culture laboratory, he said.

This apart, it is also planning to roll-out a short term course on tissue culture techniques, to disseminate the methods of cultivation of the plants to a wider population.

Recently, the Botanical Survey of India came out with a list of 1,000 endangered plant varieties, out which the society has selected nearly 24 species for cultivation.

"The pharmaceutical companies may need a licence from forest departments for sourcing the herbs used in medicines, but there is no strict monitoring on the quantity of the herbs they extract, as a result, many medicinal plants are now extinct or extremely rare," he said.

The society runs two one-year courses on herbology and horticulture with Jadavpur University and Calcutta University respectively.