Last week, Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha and Union Minister of State in PMO with Independent charge of Science and Technology Department, Dr Jitendra Singh inaugurated the North India’s first Industrial Biotech Park constructed at Ghatti near Kathua. Another Biotech Park is under construction at Handwara.
The Biotech Park could prove quite useful for scientists, promising small and medium sized entrepreneurs in taking forward and nurturing their life science ideas, discoveries, experiences etc in fields like Agriculture, Industrial, Medical and Environmental Biotechnology and translate the same into commercial value with no risks involved.
Among others, the new Biotech capabilities and innovation, according to Sinha, will enable J&K to harness market advantages in the most effective way and help the farmers to generate more income using medicinal plants.
Jammu and Kashmir is bestowed with incredible diversity of medicinal plants. Without a doubt, the rich biodiversity adorns Jammu and Kashmir’s captivating landscape. It harbors a diversity of medicinal plants which were used in traditional health care systems for times immemorial. The major area of Jammu has a subtropical climate, while the temperate to alpine climate prevails in the Kashmir valley. There are 572 unique medicinal plants in J&K. Earlier this year the Chief Secretary of J&K rightly called for formulating a detailed plan for each one of the plants.
Medicinal plants are traded in the form of raw material as well as processed products. These have provided an important source of income for communities living in the region, particularly in Kashmir, for a long time.
According to a survey by NCBI, the medicinal plants in Kashmir Himalayas regulate the livelihood of the people and support cultural ecosystem services. Asteraceae, Rosaceae, Lamiaceae, Malvaceae, Ranunculaceae, Poaceae, Solanaceae, Polygonaceae, Plantaginaceae and Brassicaceae are the top most dominant families. Herbaceous groups of plants were more common than trees and shrubs, and 71.96% of herb taxa were employed as medicine. Liliaceae, Liliaceae, Caprifoliaceae and Portulacaceae have the highest family use value (FUV).
Humans have been using medicinal plants since ancient times and there has been documentation of these uses.
There is also a need to increase the number of case studies focusing on searching for such variables to better understand situations in which each medicinal plant has predictive power over the species’ cultural importance. There is also hope that tapping medicinal plants will help in generating employability.
