Abstract

Ever-increasing demand of herbal medicines in the world market has put alarming threats to the existence of Himalayan medicinal plants, reported to be the richest source of active bio-molecules. Due to overexploitation, majority of these bear threatened status while some have become extinct. Variousin-situ and ex-situ conservation efforts have been made by the Government of India through various bodies still situation seems to be pathetic. The present work was aimed at exploring the on-going efforts in order to understand the nature of challenges being faced and to design novel framework for improvement. Despite great efforts, cultivation of medicinal plants was not found popular because of several reasons, rendering it incapable for fulfilling the market demand. Consequently, supply of raw material to herbal industry is largely made through illegal harvesting from wild, which was observed as the greatest challenge. Various in-situ programs were found in a dire need of local people involvement at various stages, who can become a major taskforce for this. Micropropagation of many high value medicinal plants was found restricted to research papers only due to lack of commercial centers; while for many such plants micropropagation is yet to be standardized.  The in vitro conservation efforts like gene banks, seed banks were not found extended to many high value plants. Different bodies involved in different conservation programs lacked proper coordination, documentation and dissemination of information. Suitable innovative and promising suggestions are made in the end. Establishment of extensive and organized network system, extending to every village for involving the local people is one suggestion. Development of an organized central pool of information to strengthen the on-going efforts, and establishment of Micropropagation Parks with special employment avenues to local people are also suggested. These suggestions if suitably implicated will go a long way for conserving this invaluable herbal wealth.

Key words: In-situ, ex-situ, herbal industry, threatened, micropropagation, seed bank, gene bank.