eChapters

Abstract

Wild medicinal plants have been major source of therapeutic agents for alleviation or cure of human diseases since time immemorial. These are extensively utilized throughout the world in two distinct areas of health management i.e., modern medicine and or folk medicine. Some of the important medicinal plants grown and cultivated in India for medicine, phytochemicals, nutraceuticals, cosmetics and others are Abelmoschus moschatus, Aristolochia bracteata, Cassia alexandrina, Caralluma fimbriata, Gymnema sylvestre, Withania somnifera and other species. They have become important sectors of trade and commerce. However, in India, about 90% collection of medicinal plants is form wild source and since 70% of collections involve destructive harvesting, many plants have become endangered or vulnerable or threatened. The increasing demands of the pharmaceutical industry have created problem of supply and one of the major difficulties being experienced by the industry is that of obtaining sufficient quantities of medicinal plants for the manufacture of genuine medicine.

Abstract

Crocus sativus L. commonly called as saffron is a Persian plant belonging to the Iridaceae family and is cultivated for more than 4000 years. It grows exclusively in India, the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean region. Saffron is traditionally used for, as a food supplement and its pharmacological properties such as antihypertensive, anticonvulsant, anxiolytic aphrodisiac, antioxidant, antidepressant etc. It comprises of the dried stigma which comprises of 150 different types of metabolites, of which some are responsible for the color, flavor and aroma of the Saffron. Saffron is a plant with great significance as an adaptogen and seems to be promising as a nutraceutical in barring several diseases. The current chapter explores the Ethnobiology, historical background, chemical constituents, ethnopharmacological properties, uses and toxicity of Saffron.

Abstract

Plants have been the source of food and medicine since time immemorial. Tribal people have been using several plants and their parts as source of alternative food that is conventionally not consumed by urban population. However recently, due to increasing population and reducing agriculture land, such alternative foods are gaining attention. Such alternative foods often also have medicinal value and are consumed by tribals for ameliorating certain disorders. Due to rising costs of modern medicine and associated side effects, general public perception is positive for alternative medicines and traditional therapies. Yams are an example of such alternative medicinal foods and are the focus of this chapter. Here we describe the ethnobotanical and nutraceutical potential of yams. We have discussed, in detail, some of the species that are consumed in various regions of India. During the compilation of this data, it was noticed that detailed molecular information is not available for most species, while for some species almost no molecular data exists. Further, many species have not been properly evaluated through modern natural product chemistry and pharmacological screening methods to validate the claims made in ethnobotanical surveys. These and other lacunas in knowledge pertaining to yams have also been pointed out towards the end of the chapter.

Abstract

Asteraceae, one of the largest families of flowering plants, is of worldwide distribution and inhabits almost every environment except Antarctica. The family exhibits various life forms and is known to harbour a wide variety of phytochemicals. The study aimed at systematically documenting the precious ethnobotanical knowledge (ethnomedicinal, ethnotoxic and wild edible plants) of Asteraceae in district Udhampur. A total of 42 infomants between the age group 21-90 years were interviewed and 28 plant species of Asteraceae belonging to 26 genera were observed to be of ethnobotanical significance in district Udhampur. All the taxa were growing in wild and majority of them were herbs. The ethnomedicinal formulations were prepared in the form of paste, decoction, powder, etc which were found to be effective against plethora of ailments. The ethnotoxic plants were observed to exert their adverse effects by causing different ailments or diseases. The present study may serve as a base line data for further research and will go a long way in the treatment of major and minor ailments, protecting people from being poisoned by substances that may have cured them and also serving as food source.

Abstract

Sikkim is part of the eastern Himalayan hotspot. Rich biological diversity of the region is owing to its wide range of topography, varied climatic condition and high annual precipitation, inhabited by three major ethnic communities, the Lepchas, Bhutias and Nepalese. With its unique ethno-cultural diversity and equally rich Phyto-diversity, the region holds an immense ethno-botanical knowledge and potential. The collection of food, fodder, fuel wood, timber, herbs for folk medicine from wild is an integral and deep-rooted cultural component and for sustaining socio-economic condition of the people. Medicinal plants of this region have potential for value addition as well as domestication. The folk medicine practices of three ethnic groups are different, but in general there are strong beliefs system in relation of folk medicine with supernatural forces and deities; local people consider its mountain peaks, forest, lakes as sacred hence it helps in sustainable management of its natural resources traditionally. Developments activities, urbanization, overexploitation of important plants and not giving due importance to the traditional knowledge in the past decades leads to the potential depletion in wild and that bring concern for their conservation. A proper strategic plan is needed for conservation of these valuable resources and promoting the indigenous traditional knowledge for sustainable development. Conservation-linked with people participation has been initiated in Sikkim through Sikkim State biodiversity board (SSBB), with its biodiversity management committees (BMCs), and local activist and stakeholders. The research institution of the region and researcher from outside has contributed immensely in documentations of the ethno-botanical knowledge and phyto-diversity of this region. This chapter reviews the current status of traditional ethno-botanical knowledge system of Sikkim state and highlights the current scenario of biological diversity; conservation practices, threats and challenges.

Abstract

The Himalaya is one of the youngest and the richest mountain ecosystems encompassed with a variety of species of both flora and fauna. Varying in climatic conditions coupled with altitudinal gradients and unique topography leads to the formation of different types of forests, which varies from tropical to the temperate and alpine to no timber line zone and snow-clad meadows. The present study aimed to investigate the potential of medicinal plants growing in valleys and mountains of district Doda to cure various ailments of the local inhabitants including animal health care. A total of 113 species belonging to 104 genera and 55 families of angiosperms, gymnosperms and cryptogams (lycophytes and ferns) were recorded and reviewed from published documents used for treatment of different diseases in the regions. Out of the total 113 species, 17 species were of trees, 14 species were shrubs, 78 types of herbaceous plants and 4 species of climbers. Asteraceae, Lamiaceae, Rosaceae, Ranunculaceae, Polygonaceae, Solanaceae, Apiaceae, Pinaceae, Fabaceae and Berberidaceae were recorded as the dominant families of the study area. The data were collected while interacting with local people as they possess rich traditional knowledge regarding the use of different herbal plants and medicine.

Abstract

Ethnobotany as an academic discipline surfaced in the 19^th century. Traditional medicine is used globally and is of rapidly growing economic importance. In developing countries, traditional medicine is often the only accessible and affordable treatment available. The chapter deals with importance of plants in the life of people, value of collecting the plant samples and adding knowledge to plants based on their economic potential and issues related to ethnopharmacology.

Keywords: Ethobotany, Ethnopharmacology, Drug discovery, Research ethics.

    1.    What is the percentage of water in an adult’s body weight
        a)    50%    b)    60%
        c)    90%    d)    70%
    2.    __________ is a direct reactant in hydrolytic processes of many foods
        a)    Water    b)    Moisture content
        c)    Both a&b    d)    None
    3.    The bond angle of the isolated water molecule (vapor state) is
        a)    109°    b)    104.5°
        c)    109°28'    d)     103.6°

INTRODUCTION

Mass production was the hallmark for improvement of productivity in early 20^th century. Subsequently the productivity development was driven by the use of information technology and related concepts like Entrepreise resource planning (ERP), Customer relationship Management (CRM), Business Process Reingineering, TQM etc. These technologies and concepts were instrumental in collection, codification, analysis, decision making and execution of decision which translated to better coordination and profitability. The ability to harness synergy out of the information systems, coordinated team and goal orientation helped in executing strategies with sharpness, proactively identifying customer need, responding to social context and competitive scenario with alacrity. As it stands now, with internet and multimedia technologies it is faster to form organization, reach out to the stakeholders. Technology mediation has improved the productivity and quality of economic activities. It has still lot more options to come in the 21^st century.

Sovereign state performances from different parts of the world have been going through a different set of social and performance context. Over last couple of decades multiple social issues have surfaced. Issues like “rich and poor divide”, “increase of least developed countries (LDCs)”, have forced a thinking about the efficacy and efficiency of governance processes. The social and economic context in multiple countries gave rise to the Millenium Development Goals (MDG) of the UN. Governments in most of the countries have short life span than before, and are now elected with lower margins. The recent Jasmine revolution has eliminated entrenched dictators, almost without bloodshed vastly due to the use of technology like, social-e-media platforms. Regional aspirations have become strong, vociferous and demanding. Splintering of USSR, Sudan, Unification of Germany, Iraq, overthrowing of monarchy in Nepal and closer home in India, there is clamour for more states. In a multi-party democracy, few national parties have got splintered into or have given rise to multiple regional political parties to represent the local aspirations. Governments are now grappling with economic crisis. Democracy as the form of the government, ironically, has not been able to live upto the expectations. On different facet, recently the issues like wikieleaks and exposure of snooping of different governments on its own citizens, have indicated the lack of trust of people.

INTRODUCTION

Intellectual Property Right (IPR) is described as a generic legal term for patents, copyrights, and trademarks, making the feasibility for legal rights to protect ideas, the expression of ideas, and the inventors and creators of such ideas (Brown, 2003). Two types of rights, first, associated with patents and second, associated with copyrights are included into the current IPR regimes. The social purpose behind the IPR is to reward the originator of an invention. Intellectual property serves as a strong foundation of the modern information economy since it promotes software, life sciences, and computer industries, and has becomes a part of most of the products we consume today (Gallini and Scotchmer, 2002).

1. INTRODUCTION

Science and Technology are vital for developing low-input and high-output agriculture and pharmaceutical. India needs frugal use of natural resources and diversification of agricultural activities. Transgenic technologies are highly misunderstood. Genetically modified crops are a result of them. In fact genetic modification of crops for human use is going on since their domestication. By introduction of Bt cotton in 2002, yields have doubled. American bollworm can no longer threaten Indian cotton crops. Insects can develop resistance to Bt gene or some virus attacking the crop needs more research. RNA-mediated gene suppression may aid the development of patent strategies that will support the next generation of genetically modified crops and enhance scope of patenting. Many fancy Organic farming, which will need 40 percent more agricultural land for present number of people on earth although it is ever increasing. Biotechnology has revolutionized agriculture, healthcare, industrial processing, environmental sustainability and is also a revenue generator. India is poised for a tremendous growth in BT sector. NanoBT has now entered into furthering the useful research on faster pace. It has scientific and technical pool of human resources, rich biodiversity, large agricultural and market base for new BT products and world recognition as a producer of low cost, high quality bulk drugs and formulations. Issues surrounding Intellectual Property Rights and BT inventions are varied but interrelated. Basic research has to be transferred to applied field and the resultant is to be commercialized. In some countries, plant varieties are protected by sui generis system. Post genome research has added fuel to the fire; new innovative fields, like ‘Bioinformatics’ with plenty of biology information and new processing methods have emerged. BT uses four tools of IPR, viz. Patents, Trademarks, Trade secrets and Copyright. At present, its contribution to the World’s patenting activity is less than three percent. As such there is a necessity to amend the IP laws to give better protection to R&D, and better enforcement of IP, technology transfer and licensing arrangements. Biotech industry in India is flourishing more in pharmaceuticals, particularly in healthcare. There is an urgent need for harmonization of administration and centralization of the patenting process in accordance with WIPO diktats.

ABSTRACT

Intellectual property rights (IPR) have, in recent years, emerged as perhaps the most important aspect of legal system as far as protection of inventions is concerned. Intellectual property rights have been created to ensure protection against unfair trade practices. The protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) could be a means to acknowledge a creator for something new or it could be means to recover the financial investments of a financer. IPR ensures that the knowledge, innovation and capital involved in the development of a product/ technology are compensated with highest rewards, insufficient protection of IP will lead to fewer rewards and even some of the inventions will be driven to extinction. As a result the innovators may conveniently relocate to regions where they can protect the IP they develop, the latter will result in intellectual loss to a particular country. Knowledge management on the other hand, emphasizes the challenge behind effective management of innovation systems by providing protection to databases, learning tools and sharing process that innovators have developed over a period of time. Effective Knowledge management provides platform for sharing of technologies through licensing and cross-licensing agreements between different countries. The chapter deals with the fundamentals of intellectual property, its types, the applications of different categories of intellectual property in the area of science and technology including biotechnology, literature and arts, and the commercial value of intellectual property assets. Moreover, protecting traditional knowledge through the intellectual property rights and identification, documentation transmission revitalization and promotion of cultural heritage by traditional knowledge has been discussed.

ABSTRACT

This paper broadly deals with salient applications of Information Technology in various areas related to Agriculture Research, Government’s digital initiatives, Indian Council of Agriculture Research IT initiatives in agriculture research as step, towards reaching agriculture knowledge and technology to small holders (Resource-Poor-Farmers). The present paper identifies new emerging areas of usage of computer application in Horticulture research and development.

INTRODUCTION

The horticultural sector is facing the challenges of dwindling land resources, increasing biotic and abiotic stresses, indications of factor productivity decline, threatened loss of bio-diversity, new IPR regime etc, (Adiguru and Mruthyunaja, 2004). Further, Indian agriculture has come under significant adjustment pressure from market liberalization and globalization. Farmers need reliable and timely information about best practices of production, processing, marketing, input and output prices, financial markets and risk-covering institutions. Existing public extension system has become outdated and ineffective in spite of the fact that it has been a catalyst in successfully heralding the Green Revolution in the country. This is partly due to an inadequate use of new means of information dissemination (Adhiguru et al., 2003). The public extension system follows a top-down approach and has become less interactive, more time-consuming and costly and fails to meet the expectations of those involved in the agricultural production and other involved in the value chain. Therefore, a new extension system re-oriented to meet the information needs of the farmers should be put in place across the country by using ICT.

1. INTRODUCTION

Until the 1990s, the phrase Corporate Governance (CG) was relatively unknown but since then it has gained a huge importance when the corporate sector was surrounded with problems of unethical practicesand flagrant violations of rules and regulations in a number of countries. CG has received increased attention as multiple cases of risk of corporate failures both for public and private sectors. Multiple corporate failures worldwide, such as those of Maxwell, Enron, Global crossing, and Sunbeam forced the regulatory authorities to set up codes and standards on CG.The Indian market has also faced a number of scams since early nineties.Harshad Mehta Stock Scam in 1992 is one of the corporate frauds in the country which finally resulted in setting up of Kumar Mangalam Birla Committee in 1999. Based on their recommendations in 2000, Clause 49 on CG was inserted in the listing agreement of every stock exchange in India. The purpose was to promote and raise standards of CG of listed companies. CG has now become most common phrase in the business world of 21^st century. It is important for financial health of the corporations and relationshipwith the public at large; may it be an individual or community especially after the collapse of Satyam Software Services Ltd. in 2008.It has been made mandatory for the Indian companies to comply with CG norms, to give reports and disclosures as per the listing agreement and various provisions of the Companies Act in their annual reports. The importance ofCG in the 21^st century keeps on increasing as the economy is growing.

In today’s technology driven 21^st century, software has become an integral part of our day to day work. Starting from checking day’s schedule in tablet after waking up in the morning till setting up alarm before going to bed at night, we are using numerous software applications in a day without even realizing the efforts spent to make those applications work perfectly every time we use it. If we look deeply, each software application in computer or in any electronic/computer controlled device go through multiple rigorous cycles of testing to ensure that it is working as intended after it was built by developers and before it was launched in market for public use. In software industry, this process is termed as software quality assurance (QA) or software testing which is being considered as one of the most flourishing verticals of IT software services sectors in 21^st century.

Software testing is one of the most important phases of software development life cycle and it consumes anything between 10% to 45% of project budget depending on the type of the software and methodology followed in the development and testing life cycle. There are different types testing e.g. unit testing, integration testing, system testing, user acceptance testing, alpha, beta testing which are exercised during the testing phase and QA team needs to provide the sign off before any product is released and implemented in production or in consumer market. With the ever increasing complexity of today’s software products along with the competitive market due to easy availability of multiple product options/vendors, the importance and awareness of software quality assurance has increased over years. Consequently, various software testing methodologies have been evolved in last two decades in order to perform testing in more structured and controlled manner. In addition, there is a continuous urge for improving the operational efficiency of the testing process in the organizations in order to produce better quality software at less cost.

INTRODUCTION

The role for economic theory is no longer simply to explain how the existing system works, but also to explore how the economic system can be changed to become more adaptive and resilient in the face of the challenges of the 21st century, and how it can be more directly designed to support human well-being, in the present and the future. Simultaneous changes are needed, in both the actual economy and also in theoretical approaches of economics. The economic theory that was accepted as standard in the non-communist world during the second half of the twentieth century erects serious impediments to meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century. In order to redirect economics to be more useful, and more truly reflect the world we now face, a good starting point is to go back to the goals that are embedded in economic thinking. Here it is useful to make the distinction between intermediate and final goals. Final goals are ends that are worth achieving in themselves, while intermediate goals are pursued because they are expected to contribute to the final goals. As final goals for any economy are ‘well-being and equity in the present’ and second is ‘productive capital for the future’. Productive capital needed to maintain well-being also necessarily includes natural resources, as well as human health and education, and cohesive social systems. Increasing production and consumption are important intermediate goals for humankind in some times and places. Other obviously critical intermediate goals include climate mitigation, and promoting resilience and adaptation within both human society and ecological systems. Responding to global inequity as well as global climate change requires coordinated public policy to fundamentally redirect existing economic systems. In addition to a much greater emphasis on equity, economic theory that is appropriate to the needs of the twenty-first century will need to be more concerned with the meta-externalities of the economic system. The business sphere is currently creating meta-externalities of culture and politics that place great burdens on the core sphere, and that tie the hands of governments. This does not necessarily imply that the for-profit sphere is “bad” and the others “good”—rather that institutional changes must be made to bring the purposes and functions of all three spheres into better harmony. To address such a complex issues, economic theories and models that developed in the past should embedded with new advent in computational technologies. In venturing a vision of technological possibilities rather than simply projecting linear or exponential changes in performance, it is crucial to think not only of how technical improvements lead to the substitution of a new generation of tools for existing ones, but also of how entirely new uses, and indeed new needs, might emerge.

INTRODUCTION

Agricultural systems and the environment in which it operates have become increasingly complex which encompass both agricultural production and marketing systems. Both of them are rich in complexity and diversity (Spedding, 1975) and to understand the complexity and structure of such systems and their functions require the use of mathematical modelling frameworks that represent their key features. Disciplines that are required to develop and solve such models include: biology, computer programming, statistics, mathematics, economics, and social science. Models are being developed to investigate specific issues such as weed infestation, soil health, nitrogen cycling, the effects of climate change, climate variability, and to assist developing countries to improve their production at their farm gate. During the first half of 20th Century, most agricultural products were produced by means of labour and the majority of the produce was used for own consumption. However, as time progressed labour was substituted for machines, production became more market-oriented and consequently the practice of farming also transformed from “a way of living” to business enterprises run on business principles.