Abstract

Role of Quantitative Ethnobotany in conservation and Sustainable Use of Plant wealth

Author(s): Preeti Rani, Rupinder Kumar, Neelu Sood

Census of India 2011, reports that 68.84% of country’s total population lives in rural areas. Due to inadequate public health services and trained health workers, poor people in rural areas are not having sufficient modern healthcare facilities. Over the years, native population has been using local plants for medicinal purposes and has accumulated significant ethnomedicinal information and therefore found ways to deal with such health insufficiency. This manuscript contains statistical indices used in description of quantitative ethnobotany. The statistical indices require native data regarding usage of local plants in a particular area which is collected using proforma and interviews. Subsequently, the data is translated and statistically analyzed to arrive at some important result. For long, anthropogenic activities have been threatening plant wealth which led to extinction of many ethnomedicinally important plant species. Loss of such plant bodies stands for unsustainability. Through this study it is anticipated that ethnobotany plays a key role in conservation and sustainable use of plant wealth in rural pockets of Haryana, India.