INDIAN SCIENCE CONGRESS - India Environment Portal

Section XIV : Plant Sciences 19
betterment of nutrition especially among the children and women. Hence there is
a need to diversify the Indian horticulture towards non green food resources and
promote research in the areas of applied Mycology for a holistic horticultural/
agricultural growth. This article sums up in brief the multifaceted role mushrooms
can play in the diversification of Indian Horticulture.
17. Medicinal Plants and Their Perspective as a Source of Novel
Antimicrobials
P. Kaushik and Pankaj Goyal
Deptt. of Botany & Microbiology,
Gurukul Kangri University,
Hardwar-249 404
Keywords : Medicinal plants, antimicrobial, novel use
In the last decade, the pace of development of new antimicrobial drugs has
slowed down while the prevalence of resistance (especially multi-drug resistance)
among microbial pathogens has increased astronomically. A feasible way to combat
the problem of microbial resistance is the development of new antibacterial agents
for substitution with ineffective ones. Thus, there is an important demand to explore
and develop new classes of effective antimicrobial agents to delay or prevent the
arrival of a post-antibiotic era. An analysis of the origin of the drugs indicated that
natural products or drugs derived from natural products comprised almost 30% of
all new chemical entities (NCEs) launched into the market. Medicinal plants belong
to the earliest known health care natural products and have been the basis of many
traditional and complementary/alternative medicine systems viz. Ayurveda, Yoga,
Unani, Siddha, Homeopathy and Naturopathy. The profound knowledge of herbal
remedies in traditional cultures developed through trial and error and it continues to
provide mankind with new remedies. Modern allopathic medicine has its roots in
ancient medicine and it is likely that many important new remedies will be
discovered and commercialized in future, by following the leads provided by
traditional knowledge and experience. Many herbs used by Ayurvedic practitioners
show promising results and could be appropriate for larger randomized trials;
however, there is no unique category of herbal drugs as per the Indian Drugs Act.
Isolation and characterization of pharmacologically active compounds from medici-