Volume 163, 2 April 2015, Pages 43–59
Research Paper
Ethnobotany of Medicinal Plants in the Thar Desert (Sindh) of Pakistan
Abstract
Ethnopharmacological relevance
The
traditional use of medicinal plants in health-care practices among the
rural communities provides the basis for natural drug discovery
development. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first
quantitative ethnobotanical investigation on the use of medicinal plants
in the Thar Desert (Sindh) of Pakistan.
Methods
In
total, 530 local informants and traditional healers were interviewed,
using semistructured interviews. Various quantitative indices such as
relative frequency of citation (RFC), use value (UV), informant
consensus factor (ICF), fidelity level (FL), relative importance (RI),
and the Jaccard Index (JI) were applied to the documented data.
Results
The
traditional medical uses of 87 plant species belonging to 32 families
were reported on. Amaranthaceae was the most-frequently cited (nine
species), followed by Cucurbitaceae and Euphorbiaceae (six species
each). The most dominant life form was herbs (73.56%). The most-used
plant parts were leaves, with 65 reports (28.88%), followed by seeds
(16%). The common mode of preparation reported was powder (25.75%), with
74% herbal medicines obtained from fresh plant materials.
Conclusion
The
ethnobotanical result documented in this study provides practical
evidence about the use of medicinal plants among the inhabitants of the
Thar Desert. Further, the findings revealed that the medicinal plants of
the area are a major source of herbal drugs for primary health care
used among the rural communities. This survey can be used as baseline
information for further scientific investigation to develop new
plant-based commercial drugs.
Graphical abstract
Keywords
- Ethnobotany;
- Quantitative analyses;
- Medicinal plants;
- Thar Desert;
- Pakistan
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