Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Need for documenting medicinal plants stressed

Informative:C. Swaminathan, Vice-Chancellor of Bharathiar University (second left) and L. Balaji Saravanan, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Coimbatore City (Law & Order) during the release of a souvenir at the conference on herbal medicine in Coimbatore recently.

COIMBATORE: There is an urgent need for documenting medicinal plants and its standardisation for making it acceptable in the modern era, G. Ilavazhagan, Director, Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences, Defence Research and Development Organisation, said here recently.

He was inaugurating a two-day national conference at Bharathiar University that was being jointly organised by the Department of Biotechnology, and Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and DRDO, in association with the university's Department of Botany.

Mr. Ilavazhagan also suggested that the demand in global market for medicinal plants and herbal medicines could grow up to $ seven trillion by 2050.

K. Radhakrishna, Scientist ‘G', Defence Food Research Laboratory, spoke on the need for inducing herbal medicine and its applications in functional foods. “Some phytochemicals in medicinal plants are essential and they are useful in treatment of specific ailments. Recent in-depth research has shown that a few of the medicinal plants with adaptable and tonic functions may also have a therapeutic value in case of specific ailments.

Most common and widely utilised herbs have been directly or indirectly found to effect mental and physical performance,” Mr. Radhakrishna said.

C. Swaminathan, Vice-Chancellor of the university, said there was an urgent need to preserve our cultural heritage by protecting our herbal medicine and also taking them into consideration with scientific evidences.

L. Balaji Saravanan, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Coimbatore City (Law & Order), S. Manian, Head, Department of Botany, Bharathiar University, and N. Krishnakumar, Director, Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding, spoke.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Students to undergo training at IIT Kanpur
Campus recruitment at Karpagam on Sept. 20
Crackdown on rule violators
Speed limit on Coimbatore roads increased
Voters' strength in Coimbatore district goes up by 9 per cent
TiE plans to start Coimbatore chapter
‘Dentistry has achieved great strides'
Electrotherm sees growth in Coimbatore market
Excess fare collection in buses flayed
Distributed
‘Cane operations should be mechanised'
Plea to prevent unlawful activities in ATR
‘Give Way to Ambulance' campaign
Dangerous
Applications invited
Birla Sun Life launches two new variants
Power back up UPS for computers launched
Changes in electricity charges payment schedule
Training to set up agri-clinics and business
AUT deplores delay in faculty appointment
Tiny shoot
Need for documenting medicinal plants stressed
In Coimbatore Today

Copyright © 2010, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu