With the growing interest in traditional and complementary systems of medicine across the globe, a facility located in Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT) campus, Bangalore helps authenticate the identity of medicinal plants, especially in the form of a repository of the natural resources. 

This centre named as Bio-cultural herbarium is a one-stop information related to plants and currently holds about 40,000 accessions pertaining to more than 3,200 medicinal plants collected from across various bio-geographic regions of the country. A unique feature of this herbarium is its easy accessibility both to the scientific community and the layman which has been achieved through linking the cultural information pertaining to vernacular names, local uses and classical uses of plants to the herbarium database.

The centre also has a repository of raw drugs collected directly from the botanical source and samples. The herbarium and raw drug repository is supported with an image library that currently possesses over 20,000 images. Dr Noorunnisa Begum, curator of the Herbarium says “Traditional knowledge of medicinal plants and their utilisation is increasingly being realised and put to use by modern medicine”.

The long term goal of the centre is to act as a vehicle to promote medicinal plant conservation and in turn help revive health care traditions.

source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> Supplements> Spectrum / by Manish Sharma / March 11th, 2014