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Ethno-Botanical Study of Medicinal Plants from Unexplored Area of District Ramban (J&K) India

Background: Medicinal plants are used for different purposes and in diverse uses of human beings. Medicinal plants have played key roles in the lives of local peoples living in these biodiversity rich regions by providing products for both food and medicine. A study was conducted in hill station of District Ramban (J&K) in order to check the present status of medicinal plants diversity their abundance and for suggested utilization measures for residential peoples of the area. The current ethnobotanical study aimed to survey and collect the medicinal plants in order to document the traditional knowledge from the local peoples. Methods: In this field-laboratory investigation during 2019-2020, Three large sampling zones of Ramban District were surveyed and selected based on varied local data, altitude and latitude. In the laboratory, the collected medicinal plants were identified morphologically based on the valid Taxonomic keys and Herbaria Result: During the field survey, medicinal plants used by the local community were ranged from 68 to 79 plant species, which were 46 to 55 herbs, 13 to 15 trees, and 08 to 09 shrubs from selected sampling zones for treating various diseases and disorders. These medicinal plants are distributed in 38 families with diversity of Asteraceae family was dominant in all sampling zones.


INTRODUCTION
Ethno-medicine plays very significant role in human health care since time immemorial. According to WHO, about 80% of the people in developing countries still depend on local medicinal plants to fulfil their primary health needs. Ethnobotanical surveys have been found to be one of the reliable approaches to drug discovery (Fabricant and Fornsworth, 2001;Kalaichelvi and Swaminathan, 2009;Verma, 2006). India is fortunate to have tremendous and varied medicinal plants resources distributed broadly in the vivid forest ecosystem. According to WHO approximately 80% of world population in developing countries depends on traditional medicines for primary health care (Uniyal, 2005;Verma, 2010). The Indian Himalayan region spreads across Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, and Arunachal Pradesh. Jammu and Kashmir are a treasure of floral and faunal diversity. At least 500 million people in India directly or indirectly depend on medicinal plants derived drugs for their health care needs (Noorjahan and Saranya, 2018). Many studies have been carried out from time to time to document the ethnomedicinal information from different districts of Jammu and Kashmir, India (Sharma et al., 2012;Sharma et al., 2019;Khan et al., 2004) except unexplored area of District Ramban.
Therefore, in the present study, an effort has been made to document some locally available medicinal plants used by the local community of district Ramban, for curing various diseases. The present data has its importance because it is recorded for the first time.

Description about study area
The study area was divided into three sampling zones and every zone has further three stations for the collection of medicinal plants.

Sampling strategy
The study was conducted on monthly basis on all the threesampling station of district Ramban for the period of one year during 2019-2020. The sampling process was completed in three days every month and two sites were covered in one day.

Collection of Medicinal plants
The collection and identification of specimen has been done by flowering/fruiting to facilitate the process of identification covering all the sampling month. In case of trees and shrubs, branches of suitable size in flowering or fruiting stages were taken. Field number for each collected sample was assigned. Larger specimens were folded in shape of V, N, or M. The specimens were pressed in blotting sheets with the help of wooden and iron presses in the field. Flowers of the Himalaya, Flora Britannica and other local floras for confirmation of identity. The technique for collection of plants was the same as suggested by (Jain and Rao, 1978).

Identification of Medicinal plants
The plants were identified with the help of flora (Raizada and Saxena, 1978). The identified medicinal plants were confirmed by consulting the herbaria of different standards keys in Department of Plant Sciences, Central University of Himachal Pradesh and Department of Botany and Microbiology, Gurukula Kangri Vishwavidyalaya, Haridwar.

Documentation of local traditional knowledge
Local uses of medicinal plants of the sampling area, their local names, parts used, purpose for which it is used, method of administration were recorded through talks and conversation with elderly persons, and rural women in villages.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The results pertaining to the present research work based on ethno-botanical study of medicinal plants from unexplored area of District Ramban (J&K) India, emphasis on survey of medicinal plants in which a total number of 79 medicinal plant species belonging to 38 families had been collected and identified from the selected sampling zones. The results related to this data have been described in Table 1 to  Table 3. Total 35 families of medicinal plants were recorded from sampling zone 1 in which Asteraceae family was most    (Srivastav et al., 2009)