Wild Plants

The Treasure of Natural Healers

Mahendra Rai, Shandesh Bhattarai, Chistiane M. Feitosa, Mahendra Rai, Shandesh Bhattarai, Chistiane M. Feitosa

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367820879
• eBook ISBN: 9781000220308
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

This book offers a broad summary of the wild plants and their usage, as well as the growing interest in ethnopharmacology research. The book comprises of important issues such as diversity of wild plants with emphasis on medicinal and food plants, threats to wild plants and traditional ethnobotanical knowledge, their uses in skin diseases, snake-bites, in cosmeceuticals, etc. Moreover, the ethnopharmacological relevance of wild plants in Latin America has been discussed. The chapters include a wide range of case studies, giving updated evidence on the importance of their wild plant resources from different countries including Peru, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Brazil. In addition, some specific species are used to explain their potential properties, as well as the dangers of their use without guidance of trained natural healers. The book discusses traditional usage and properties of wild plants and is entirely different from other related publications and useful for the researchers working in the areas of conservation biology, botany, ethnobiology, ethnopharmacology, policymakers, etc.

Specific Countries

3
Wild Plants of Northern Peru

Traditions, Scientific Knowledge, and Innovation

Fidel A. Torres-Guevara,^1,2 Mayar L. Ganoza-Yupanqui,^*,2,3 Luz A. Suárez-Rebaza,³ Gonzalo R. Malca-García⁴ and Rainer W. Bussmann⁵

¹ The Mountain Institute INC, Vargas Machuca 408 Urb. San Antonio, Lima, Perú.

² Asociación para la Ciencia e Innovación Agraria de la Red Norte-AgroRed Norte, Mz O Lote 20 Urb. Los Cocos del Chipe, Piura, Perú.

³ Departamento de Farmacología, Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica, Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, Av. Juan Pablo II S/N, Ciudad Universitaria, Trujillo, Perú.

⁴ UIC/NIH Center for Botanical Dietary Supplements Research, Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 833 S. Wood St., Chicago, IL 60612, USA.

⁵ Department of Ethnobotany, Institute of Botany, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, 0105, Georgia.

^* Corresponding author: [email protected]

Introduction

The knowledge and the use of native plants by native healers of rural agrarian societies located in the moorland and cloud forests of the Northern Peruvian Andes constitute intangible and tangible treasures for sustainable development of these highly diverse ecosystems. Such development is a social opportunity in the hands of farming and peasant communities, and may become viable if a network or innovation system is created with other public and private agents of these territories in order to articulate regional, national, and international economic advantages. In this way, the role of rural Andean communities will be to sustainably establish the primary link between science and innovation chains for an economy based on the exploitation and conservation of wild plants, and the richness they possess and know well.

The participative investigation of wild plant species to put a value on their diversity, incorporates the local traditional knowledge about the use and conservation of plants, with Western scientific knowledge about phytochemistry (phytochemical discovery) in an intercultural dialogue, in order to verify, standardize, and expand the former, then make it available to the wider society as an expression of mutual interest between academia and rural society. This implies a new relationship between the academic investigator(s) and the traditional investigator(s), getting away from the investigator-informant relationship, to one as co-authors.

Academic scientific knowledge has permitted corroborating and amplifying not only the chemical properties of culturally important plants, but also proving the validity and efficacy of traditional practices for efficient extraction of important plant-based active principles, and the important influence of growing location and harvest time on the biochemical proportions of wild plans, due to the influence of microclimates, microhabitats, and annual cycles in the cloud forest and Páramo ecosystems.

The economic use of knowledge generated through a participative investigation based on traditional knowledge requires that any benefits are also collective property of the society involved in the investigation. This focus, with the idea to improve livelihoods and well-being of the participating community, implies it is a new form of organization, implying the necessity for organizational innovations, such as the conversion of natural or formal local organizations into legal entities in order to be able to access funding instruments for sustainable environmental projects.

Thus, the community organizations participating in the investigation of wild plants become the owners of the results, through a change from their current role as sole providers of primary material and knowledge about plant use, to providers of crude drugs, essential oils, liquid extracts, or high quality natural products needed for phytochemical analyses of toxicity, pharmacological activity, concentration of phenolic compounds, antioxidant activity, antibacterial activity, and identification of the most important bioactive compounds (e.g., flavonoids, tanins).

In order to allow an intensive use of studied species with potential for further development, it is necessary to establish propagation and production protocols to increase and guarantee the availability of prima material with added value. This can be achieved through three alternative efforts: (1) Cultivation in agro-ecologic fields or gardens through the uses of seeds or cuttings; (2) expansion of the wild population of the species, especially if it is as common and abundant, through community controlled, sustainable wild-collection; (3) in case of species that cannot be propagated through seeds due to difficult germination, through the establishment of in vitro protocols to establish clonal publications of the species.

The challenge of innovation based on the great wealth that wild plant biodiversity represents, lies in the reality of a social system dominated by the exclusion of rural agrarian societies with low connectivity, due to a lack of public services, e.g., road infrastructure, transport, education, and information, both with regard to quality and quantity. This context of gaps in spacial and social connectivity leads to a significant increase in terms of the cost of the cooperation between academics or technicians and the community organizations that hold the natural resources and traditional knowledge for the development of markets for innovations based on the diversity of wild plants with high potential. In order to overcome this challenge, both public and private actors need to engage in a process of governance and policy change in order to establish a system of innovation that will allow a change in local development policies.

Environment of Wild Plants of the Northern Andes

Moorland and Cloud Forests of the Northern Peruvian Andes

The moorland and cloud forest ecosystem complex of the Northern Peruvian Andes is located between 4°43’48¨/5°50´S and 79°36´/79°24¨W at 1,500 to 3,700 m above sea level. It occupies a surface area of about 120,000 ha (Perú 2015). These ecosystems are known as primary source of diversity for many groups of plants. In Peru, there are ab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Contents
• General
• Specific Countries
• Specific Plants and Ailments
• Index
• About the Editors