North-East India an Ethnic Storehouse of Unexplored Medicinal Plants

North East states of India are one of the richest repositories of medicinal and aromatic plants in the World. This region is also well-known for diverse culture of human races and home of large number of ethinic people of India. The age long intrinsic relationship between this ethinic people with the environmental resources mainly plants endued the modern civilization with many herbal medicines, though a large number of medicinal plants and their folk uses have remained endemic to certain tribes of the region. Scientific approach for their exploration, utilization, conservation and value addition may be the key points for entrepreneurship development by exploiting the indigenous technology knowledge. The therapeutic activity of such plants has made an outstanding contribution in the origin and evolution of many traditional herbal therapies, but such folk traditional knowledge have started to disappear with the passage of time due to scarcity of written documents and relatively low income in these traditions. Though the ethanobotanical survey is a very intricate or convoluted process, but a more number of ethanobatanical surveys, and assembly of such information in systemic way can make difference in research and development work on such medicinal plants. This type of approach also helpful for conservation programme of rare plant species.

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