Chapter 3 The Status of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in Pakistan

233 Pages·2005·1.31 MB·English

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Science and High Technology (ICS). Mention of the names of firms and commercial products does
not imply endorsement by UNIDO or ICS.
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and High Technology, 2003
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Preface
Medicinal and aromatic plants have played an important role in the socio-cultural,
spiritual and health-care needs of rural and tribal people of the emerging and developing
countries. In many developing countries, a large section of the population still relies on
traditional systems of medicine to meet their health-care needs. Also, more and more
people in the developed countries have turned to alternative therapies and herbal medi-
cines resulting in many fold increase in the demand of medicinal plants and their products
in these parts of the world.
On one hand, the global resurgence of interest in medicinal plants provides opportu-
nities for the emerging and developing countries to derive economical benefit, and on the
other hand, it threatens the existence of natural resources of medicinal plants under the
pressure of unsustainable collections and allurements of short-term monetary gains. The
demand for medicinal and aromatic plants in the international market has shot-up sud-
denly not giving enough time to developing countries to rise to the occasion. Over-har-
vesting of high-value or high-demand medicinal plants has already threatened the exist-
ence of many valuable plant species. The situation is precariously balanced and requires
all countries to make proper assessment of natural resources and sustainable quantities
that can be taken out without jeopardizing the interest of our future generations.
The utilization of medicinal plants to develop value-added products is under-ex-
plored and under-developed in most developing countries except few states like India and
China. The lack of appropriate technologies for processing, value addition, standardiza-
tion, and inadequate information of domestic resources and international marketing op-
portunities are some of the bottlenecks in developing medicinal plant-based industry in
the developing countries.
The International Centre for Science and High Technology (ICS-UNIDO) in its en-
deavour to promote sustainable utilization of medicinal plants in emerging and develop-
ing countries, has conducted a series of training courses and workshops to build technical
know-how in developing countries, to emphasize the sustainable use of medicinal plant
resources and to promote value addition of medicinal plants before they are exported to
the international market. From time to time, ICS conducts workshops to update informa-
tion on sensitive aspects of medicinal plant industry. In the year 2001, it organized a
workshop to discuss the status of medicinal and aromatic plants in different parts of the
world and many of the compiled papers in this document were presented at that work-
shop.
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This publication has consolidated the information generated at different workshops
conducted by ICS and gives a detailed account of medicinal and aromatic plant resources,
their utilization pattern, R&D activities, marketing and trade situation in different coun-
tries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The document also carries information on qual-
ity control and standardization of herbal medicinal products; bio-pesticides and their role
in environment; the role of biotechnology in medicinal plants; and trade in herbal medici-
nal products. Although the information in this publication is not complete, it gives an
overview of the prevailing situation in different parts of the world to stimulate those
associated with any aspect of medicinal and aromatic plants. It will serve as information
source for policy-makers, scientists, farming community and entrepreneurs to develop
strategies for the development of the medicinal plant sector, and to formulate plans for
the conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plant biodiversity.
Gennaro Longo
Area Director
Earth, Environmental and Marine
Sciences and Technologies
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Acknowledgements
The Area of Earth, Environmental and Marine Sciences and Technologies of ICS-
UNIDO is grateful to the scientific experts who gave wholehearted support to this ICS
initiative.
Special thanks go to Mr. Francesco Pizzio, Managing Director of ICS-UNIDO, for
his constant encouragement throughout the medicinal and aromatic plants activities, to
the scientific and secretarial staff of the Area for guidance, compilation, preparation and
editorial work, and to the publications staff for their contribution to editorial work.
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Contents
Page
Part 1: Utilization Status of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants 1
1. The Status of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in Cambodia, Laos,
The Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, Krisana Kraisintu 3
2. The Status of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in India and Nepal,
Karan Vasisht and Maninder Karan 55
3. The Status of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in Pakistan,
Farzana Shaheen, Atta-ur-Rahman , Karan Vasisht and M. Iqbal Choudhary 77
4. The Status of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in Indonesia,
Bambang Mursito, Karan Vasisht and Vishavjit Kumar 89
5. The Status of Herbal Products: the Case of East Africa,
Ermias Dagne 103
6. The Status of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in Central and
Southern Africa, Marianne J. Ngoulla 111
7. The Status of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in Libya,
Abdurazag Auzi 119
8. The Experience of the Iberoamerican Programme of Science and
Technology for Development in Latin America, Mahabir P. Gupta
and Armando Cáceres 125
Part 2: Quality Control and Standardization 141
9. Quality Assurance of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants,
Sukhdev Swami Handa and Karan Vasisht 143
10. European Harmonization Efforts for the Quality of Medicinal and
Aromatic Plants, Arnold Vlietinck 165
Part 3: Bio-pesticides 173
11. Scope and Potential of Bio-pesticides in the Emerging Environmental
Concern, Chika Ukwe 175
Part 4: Biotechnological Applications to Medicinal and Aromatic Plants 199
12. The Role of Biotechnology in Improvement of Medicinal and
Aromatic Plants, Maria Luisa Villarreal and Rodolfo Quintero 201
Part 5: Trade 215
13. Trade in Herbal Medicinal Products, Vishavjit Kumar 217
Contributors 235
V
Part 1
Utilization Status of Medicinal and Aromatic
Plants
Chapter 1
The Status of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in
Cambodia, Laos, The Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam
by Krisana Kraisintu
Introduction
Medicinal plants have played a significant role in various ancient traditional systems of
medication such as the Chinese, Ayurvedic, Unani, and their secondaries in many Asian
countries. Medicinal plants still play an important role in emerging and developing countries
of Asia, both in preventive and curative treatments, despite advances in modern western
medicine. They also generate income to the people of many Asian countries who earn their
livelihood from selling collected materials from the forest, or by cultivating on their farms.
The development of modern medicine in the 1900s, along with the introduction of
modern drugs produced by pharmaceutical companies, have dealt a strong blow to tradi-
tional medicine which was accused of being inefficient, labour-intensive in preparation
and, most important, unavailable due to scarcity of raw material. This is exacerbated by
the lack of traditional doctors unable to earn a living without basic material (medicinal
plants) and demand (customers).
The high cost of modern drugs (most of which are imported from the West), their
unavailability in remote areas, and, in particular, the serious side effects of certain drugs,
have all led the pendulum of medical treatment to swing back to the side of traditional
medicine in recent years. The importance and value of traditional and indigenous herbal
medicine were the subject of a campaign of the World Health Organization (WHO). This
effort, in the 1970s, led to an appeal to all member countries to do their utmost to
preserve their national heritage in the form of ethno-medicine and ethno-pharmacology
and to bring back the use of known and tested medicinal plants and derivatives into
primary health care in rural areas and as alternatives when modern medicine was not
available. Moreover, since a large portion of drugs produced by pharmaceutical industry
are derived from medicinal plants, the demand for their raw materials is steadily rising.
Such demand is met by obtaining material from naturally-occurring plants through indis-
criminate collection, or sometimes from cultivated sources.
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Asia is unique among geographical regions of the world and possesses the highest
biological diversity worldwide, deriving from the ecological conditions particularly in the
tropical rain forests. There is thus abundant raw material for production of modern drugs.
The high diversity of the region is well reflected in a number of species including medicinal
plants that are present in the region.
Asia is not only rich in biological diversity, but also in cultural diversity. Since the
dawn of human history, biodiversity and humanity have become inextricably linked, for
example areas of high biological diversity are culturally the most rich, with a large number
of distinct communities inhabiting adjacent areas, each with its own language, culture,
and system of traditional medicine. The latter category depends on the availability of
medicinal plants easily found within the community. A wealth of traditional knowledge
about medicinal plants for curing illnesses has been accumulated over a long period and
has been handed down from generation to generation.
There existed ancient civilization in East and South Asia parallel with cultural di-
versity which took place in isolated areas in the jungles of tropical Asia. Unlike the ruins
of many empires of other regions, the Chinese and the Indian cultures were quite success-
ful, prosperous, and above all, healthy. A simple argument for their being healthy is the
number of people presently living in the two most populous countries of the world. Indo-
nesia, which is the fourth most populous country, can also claim to have “healthy” people
as well as ancient civilization. The peoples in the past had made extensive use of medici-
nal plants to cure their ailments based on local knowledge of drugs. From China and
India, systems of traditional medicine spread to all other Asian countries. They were later
modified and adopted to become systems of their own.
Asia has been well known in the modern world as the storehouse of raw material for
western pharmaceutical manufacturers. Until the last decade, the majority of these raw
materials were easily available from the wild. Along with cheap raw materials, accumu-
lated traditional knowledge of native peoples on their use was also exported freely for further
development and exploitation by western pharmaceutical companies. Owing to their long
history of use by Asian people, an enormous number of medicinal plant species are known to
them.
The Status of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in Cambodia
Covering an area of 181,035 square km, Cambodia is bordered by Thailand to the
west, Laos to the north and Vietnam to the east. Once a French colony, it was the least
known Indo-Chinese country. It has a wide basin where farming communities live a sim-
ple life, in an original civilization and philosophy of mildness, surrounded by highlands.
About 90% of the Cambodian population is Khmer and rest are Chinese, Vietnamese,
Chams, Burmese, Thai and small minorities of hill tribes.
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