eChapters

Hedge

When shrub is planted on boundary for fencing, it is also called as hedge. In other word shrubs or trees planted at regular intervals to form a continuous screen is called a hedge. It may be ornamental or protective or both. Hedge also become an important feature of formal layout to serve various function as screening of the area out building, tennis court, vegetable garden, hardening of unwanted place etc. All the shrubs cannot be planted for making an ideal hedge due to different nature of growth.

Henna or Mehandi (Lawsonia inermis L.) a perennial shrub belongs to family Lythraceae. It is commonly cultivated as a commercial dye crop possess natural dyeing properties and are used for hair dyeing and for staining of palm, feet and other body parts since times immemorial. The plant finds their importance due to presence of orange red dye in its leaves and essential oil in its flower. Oil extracted from leaves and flower called ‘Otto of henna’ which is utilized as perfume (Jaimini et al., 2005). It can grow well in harsh climate of arid and semiarid regions. In India, over 90 percent of the henna production comes from Sojat region of Pali district of Rajasthan and Sojat is only center for its processing and trading in India. In India it occupies about 40,000 ha area out of which 35,000 ha alone is in Pali district (Sojat and adjoining tehsils).

Geographical distribution

It occurs naturally in North Africa mainly in countries of Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syrian Arab Republic, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, Sahara and Yemen. It is naturally occurring in many of these countries along the water courses and semi-arid regions where it can with stand dryness as well as drought. It has been introduced into countries like Australia, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central Africa, Chad, Congo, China, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, India, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Spain, Sudan, Togo and Zanzibar (Suresh Kumar et al., 2005).

Distribution

Several countries grow henna on a commercial scale for its dye-bearing leaves, notably India, Egypt, Iran, Niger, Sudan and Pakistan. In India, it was once grown extensively in Punjab and Gujarat. However, gradually the major cultivation has shifted to the arid fringes of Rajasthan, with Pali district having the maximum area under henna. It is taken as an annual Ratoon crop under rainfed conditions. Presently over 39,000 ha of henna plantations in the district with nearly 70 per cent occurring in the Sojat area produce around 20,000 t dry leaves worth Rs. 40 crores. Besides this, leaf cuttings are also collected from existing farms and field boundary plantations in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. In Uttar Pradesh henna is grown for its scented flowers used in the essence industry. Kannauj, Lucknow, and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh are reputed centres for the commercial extraction of mehndi oil from flowers and its use in traditional essence. Since henna is grown as a dryland crop under limited moisture conditions greater use of available moisture by the plants is possible.

Suits especially scrofulous and lymphatic constitutions that are inclined to have eruptions and glandular swellings. Unhealthy skin. Blondes with sluggish character and weak muscles. Great sensitiveness to all impressions. Sweating patient pulling blanket around him. Chilliness, hypersensitiveness, splinter-like pains, craving for sour and strong things are very characteristic. The tendency to suppuration is more marked, and ahs been a strong guiding symptom in practice. The side of the body on which he lies at night becomes gradually insufferably painful; he must turn.

Hepar Sulph is the medicine for abscess, for the tendency to suppuration. Every little injury suppurates. Accompanying this suppuration is shooting pain. Suppuration or pus formation can be on any part of the body. If throbbing and shooting pain accompany it, it requires a does of Hepar Sulph in a high potency of 200 and above. Hepar Sulph can abort pus formation if given at the earliest stage of suppuration. Later it will hasten the pointing and discharge and help in healing the ulcer.

Herbaceous border

In this system plant are arranged in irregular group of a kind for harmonious are contrasting colour effect, either all flowering at one time or successfully in such a way that those flowering latter should grow up and screen the all ready flowered. The planting of annuals in the border of a plot is called as herbaceous border. When the border is to be viewed from both side tall plant are planted in center followed by medium and dwarf planting in both side. Herbaceous border may include all the herbaceous plant including herbaceous perennial (Flowering and non flowering) bulbous and annuals (see plate 20 & 21).

Typically herbal pharmaceutics may include any medicinal or functional food preparations such as phytopharmaceuticals, single or poly herbal formulations, and nutraceuticals made out of botanical materials. This includes two broad categories. First, there are many evidence based formulations and mixures that may or may not be based on traditional knowledge or practices. The second group includes all the traditional or ethnopharmacological preparations. Bringing herbal medications from either group to the market will require a pharmaceutics approach balanced with an understanding of the original context in which the treatment was used.

As an example, Ayurvedic medicines have been used safely for many years on a wide variety of patients. Medications that have not been altered from their original form have de facto gone through a type of safety testing. When a traditional medicine is prepared differently, then it is essential to validate the drug safety to be sure that the effects of the new procedure don’t cause harmful effects. In this same way, the value of animal testing to establish safety and toxicity is not as critical if the botanicals are used in traditional forms. Suitable animal models help in understanding the mechanism of action or pharmacodynamics of medicines. However, it is well known that no good animal models exist for many human diseases, such as asthma, diabetes, and rheumatism. The use of modern technology in making traditional preparations more contemporary and scientific is important but it should not compromise the original basis and principles described in tracditional medicine. The following examples highlight some of the concerns of this approach.

Marjoram is native of Southern Europe. It grows in West Asia, South and North America, France, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, England and North Africa. It is an important kitchen herb and its dried leaves with or without flowering tops in small proportion constitute the spice of commerce. In India, the crop finds its cultivation only in small scale in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. France and Egypt are the main exporters of marjoram oil in the world.

Botany and chemical composition

Marjorana hortensis is an aromatic branched perennial, 30-60 cm high. Though a perennial, it is treated as an annual under cultivation. Main stem is woody with many softer branches. Leaves are round, soft, mat green and with a marvelous sweet smell. Flowers small, whitish or purplish in terminal clusters, seeds minute, oval and dark brown in colour.

ABSTRACT

According to WHO report, over 80% of the world population relies on traditional medicine, largely plant based for their primary healthcare needs. India has 15 Agroclimatic zones, 12 ecoregions and 47,000-plant sp. and is one of the 12-mega biodiversity centres. The Indian Systems of Medicine have identified 1500 medicinal plants, of which 500 species are used in the preparation of commercial drugs. These medicinal plants contribute to 80% of the raw materials used in the preparation of drugs.

1. Introduction

Herbarium is simply a dried and pressed collection of plants arranged in an accepted sequence of classification (Lawrence 1951, Shetler 1969). It can be a very useful teaching aid or an absorbing hobby (Cronquist 1966). According to Fosberg and Sachet (1965) “A modern herbarium is a great filing system for information about plants, both primarily in the form of actual specimens of plants and secondarily in the form of published information, pictures and recorded notes”. It is also a research, training and service institution that serves as a reference centre, documentation facility and data store house (Radford 1986). It is now well recognized that a herbarium is a vast reservoir of facts about plants. The word ‘Herbarium’ was originally applied, not to a collection of plants but to a book dealing with medicinal herbs. Tournefort in about 1700 used the term as an equivalent to ‘Hortus Siccus’ which was later on adopted by Linnaeus (Stearn 1957). The present concept and development of herbarium is due to efforts of botanists for more than four centuries. The concept of herbarium has been changing continuously, which in turn, has affected the gradual development of herbarium and herbarium practices.

For practical reasons, the classification of the world’s flora is primarily based on herbarium material and the literature associated with it. Despite its limitations, a herbarium has certain advantages over living collections. It is usually only in the herbarium that we can compare all the related species of a genus in the same place, in the same state and at the same time (Davis 1961).

The herbarium material, therefore, formed the foundation of all botanical studies. We should, therefore, realise that herbaria are the custodians of enormous data pertaining to plants. They are usually seen as old-fashioned and expensive “stamp collection” without realising their paramount role in biological sciences. However, the world-wide rise of interest in the field of conservation, biodiversity and bioprospection offer a new chance for herbaria. Furthermore, computers offer a golden opportunity to raise the status of herbarium taxonomy by making routine curatorial procedures more efficient.

Although Jain and Rao (1976) elaborately discussed the methods of field collections, identification and preservation in the herbarium, the salient features of herbarium in up dated form with various procedures followed in Indian context are discussed in this chapter.

1. Introduction
Hydrogenation plays a vital role in the transformation of organic compounds, making it essential for synthesizing fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals. This process is widely utilized in both laboratories and for industrial applications (Andersson et al., 2008). Typically, two approaches are used for hydrogenation: traditional one involves direct hydrogenation using pressurized hydrogen gas, and the other relies on transfer hydrogenation (TH), which involves addition of hydrogen into a molecule from a non-H2 sources (Johnstone et al., 1985). The use of high-pressure hydrogen gas, however, demands significant investment in infrastructure, making it less economically feasible for developing a sustainable hydrogenation industry. In contrast, TH has gained increasing attention due to its sustainability, particularly when employing hydrogen donors derived from biomass, such as alcohols and organic acids, which are abundant, cost-effective, and easy to handle instead of using non-renewable H2 gas for reduction of CO2 (Becattini et al., 2021) (Figure 1).
2. Historical Background and Classification
The hydrogen transfer process has a rich history spanning over a century. In 1903, Knoevenagel first demonstrated that palladium black effectively promoted the disproportionation of dimethyl 1,4-dihydroterephthalate into dimethyl terephthalate and cis-hexahydroterephthalate, in which hydrogen transfer was occurred between identical molecules (identical donor and acceptor) (Knoevenagel et al., 1905). This pioneering work established the foundation for hydrogen transfer reactions. Braude and Linstead later categorized these reactions into three distinct types (Braude et al., 1954):

13.1 Introduction

F₁ plants produced by crossing two parents with contrasting characters are called hybrids. Hybrids generally exhibit increased vigour and fitness over the parents. This phenomenon is called hybrid vigour or heterosis. Thus, heterosis is the phenomenon in which the hybrid of two genetically dissimilar parents shows increased vigour at least over the mid-parental value. Heterosis is just the reverse of inbreeding depression, which results after selfing the plants of the cross-pollinated crops. Kolreuter (1761-66) was the first to report hybrid vigour in the hybrids of tobacco, Datura, etc. Most of the early plant hybridizers including Mendel (1865) had noticed this phenomenon. Shull (1914) coined the term heterosis from two Greek words, hetero (different) and osis (condition), to replace his own earlier word ‘stimulus of heterozygosis’. In current usage, heterosis and hybrid vigour are used as synonyms and interchangeable.

13.2 Types of Heterosis

Depending on the nature, origin, adaptability, reproducibility and non-reproducibility, heterosis can be categorized into two: (1) euheterosis (true heterosis) and (2) pseudo-heterosis (false heterosis, i.e., luxuriance).

20.1 Introduction

A hybrid cultivar (also called hybrid) is the F₁ progeny of a planned cross between inbreds, cultivars, clones or populations. Depending upon the breeding approach, the hybrid cultivar may involve two or more parents. A critical requirement of hybrid production is that the parents are divergent. This divergence is the cause of superior performance of hybrids. The outstanding performance of crops is due to the exploitation of the phenomenon of heterosis (hybrid vigour) which is high when parents are divergent. Much of what we know about heterosis breeding (also called hybrid breeding) came from the work on maize hybrid cultivar development. However, commercial hybrids are now available in many crops including self-pollinated crops.

Malvaceae, the mallow family, carries herbs, shrubs or trees comprising about 75 genera and perhaps as many as 1,500 species. Hibiscus and Abelmoschus are two important genuses under this plant family. Several species of plants of potential uses come under these two genera about which limited publications are available. 

Hibiscus

Hibiscus is a large genus of about 200-220 species of flowering plants in  Malvaceae, native to warm temperate, subtropical and tropical regions throughout the world. The genus includes both annual and perennial herbaceous plants and woody shrubs and small trees. The leaves are alternate, simple, ovate to lanceolate, often with a toothed or lobed margin. The flowers are large, conspicuous, trumpet-shaped, with five petals, ranging from white to pink, red, purple or yellow, and from 4-15 cm broad. The fruit is a dry five-lobed capsule, containing several seeds in each lobe, which are released when the capsule splits open at maturity.

Hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) is a vigorous tropical evergreen flowering shrub valued for its large, colourful and attractive blooms. In India, its flowers are widely used for religious offerings, particularly in temple worship, as well as for ornamental and loose flower purposes. The chapter introduces its origin, distribution, genetics, botanical characteristics and important varieties. It also highlights the crop’s medicinal and food-related importance, including the use of hibiscus products in herbal beverages and processed foods. Detailed production practices cover climate, soil, propagation, field preparation, nutrient management, irrigation and cultural operations. Major pests and diseases, harvesting, postharvest management and yield are also included for commercial cultivation.

Cholesterol is present in the diet of all people, and it can be absorbed slowly from the gastrointestinal tract into the intestinal lymph. It is highly fat soluble but only slightly soluble in water and is capable of forming esters with fatty acids.

The high density planting (HDP) in fruit crops is one of the new concepts of increasing the productivity without affecting the quality of fruits. The concept of high density planting was pioneered in temperate fruits in Europe at the end of 1960, since then there is rise in establishment of commercial high density orchards throughout the world. Initially HDP was followed mostly in temperate fruits e.g., apple. HDP is defined as a method of planting wherein more numbers of plants are planted per unit area as compared to conventional planting density or it is a modern method of fruit cultivation involving planting of fruit trees densely, allowing small or dwarf trees with modified canopy for better light interception and distribution and ease of mechanised field operations. It is one of the important methods to achieve high productivity per unit area both in short duration and perennial fruit crops.

Now-a-days, new orchards of fruits are planted in this system with a view to produce higher fruit yield and increased profitably. In addition, there is also a need to feed the growing population and provide them nutritional security and land resources are shrinking simultaneously due to the industrialization, urbanization etc., hence it is required to develop the modern facilities to compete with the developed nation. The success of this technology in most of the fruit crops is dependent on the use of methods to control shoot growth so as to maximize light interception. The main aim of HDP is to obtain the twin prerequisites of productivity by maintaining a balance between vegetative and reproductive growth without sacrificing plant health and fruit quality.

With the culmination of green revolution, the yield in agriculture is almost static with the use of even great deal of inputs and resources with appearing decadence in nature. The agriculture, if continuous on with same trend, will no longer productive and sustainable. Heterogenity being vested with best survival and sustenance, attempt is underway towards crop diversification deploying remunerative crops and techniques so as to keep pace with rising demand of mankind. Added to this, dwindling land : man ratio (0.13 ha during 1990s), harvesting more return from a unit area of land, disguised unemployment, improper availability of fruits and vegetables (40 g and 120 g respectively as against 120 g and 280 g for fruits and vegetables, respectively), generating employment (143 man-days/ha in cereals, 860 man-days/ha in fruit production and 1000-2500 man-days/ha in cultural intensive fruit crops), are major concerns for high density planting (HDP). It is a holistic production system which helps in promoting and preserving dynamic agro-ecosystem. HDP is also an aid to biodiversity, biological cycles and organic farming. As an alternative to raise production and productivity especially to compete global trade, HDP is worth adoption.

India is regarded as a horticulture paradise due to growing of tropical, subtropical and temperate fruit crops in varied soil and climatic conditions. However, increasing pressure on land owing to diversion of orchard lands to various other obvious reasons as well as rising energy and land-costs, together with mounting demand for fruits have made HDP imperative to achieve higher productivity from limited space.

There is a shift in farmers’ perception from production to productivity and profitability, which can be achieved through high density planting. India is the second largest producer of fruits in the world. However, the average productivity of various fruit crops in the country is quite less. Low productivity can be attributed to many reasons such as old and senile orchards, lack of canopy management practices, planting of poor yielding varieties, low or no adoption of recommended package of practices by the farmer leading to poor orchard management, etc.

ABSTRACT

The mass production of orchids through in vitro approach is now practising on a commercial scale. But, in most cases, it is being done via an intermediate callus which may lead to variability in the progenies. A study was made to standardize a protocol for rapid mericloning of tropical orchid dendrobium cv. sonia from the shoot tip explant without an intermediate callus so as to produce true to type progenies. The efficiency of production of clones through agar gelled medium and shake cultures were compared. The shoot tip explants produced an average of 6-8 multiple shoots on agar gelled (0.8% w/v) MS medium containing 3% sucrose as carbon source supplemented with a hormonal combination of 0.75 mg l^-1 NAA and 2.5 mg l^-1 KIN without an intervening callus, within a period of 3 - 4 months. When the shoot tip explants were cultured in agitated ( 80 - 100 rpm) liquid Vacin and Went ( VW) medium supplemented with 3% sucrose, 2.0 - 2.5 mg l^-1 BA and 0.5 - 1.0 mg l^-1 NAA could induce a large number of protocorms within a period of two weeks. Agitated liquid MS medium supplemented with 0.5 mg l ^-1 IBA and 2 mg l^-1 BA or 0.5 mg l ^-1 2,4 - D, 0.5 mg l^-1 GA₂ and 3.0 mg l^-1 BA was identified as the rapid multiplication medium of the protocorms. About 60 - 80 protocorms could be produced from a single protocorm within a period of 3 weeks. Transfer of these protocorms to agar gelled (0.8%w/v) MS medium containing 2% sucrose supplemented with 20 - 25% coconut milk (CM) was found ideal for plantlet formation of size 1.0 - 1.5 cm within a period of three weeks. Sub culturing of the plantlets to the same medium resulted in rapid profuse rooting. Transfering the rooted plants into bottles containing sterile coconut husk provided with half MS medium without sucrose and hormones was sufficient for in vitro hardening. By this two stage culturing technique, about 50 - 60 true to type clones can be produced from a single shoot apex within a period of 3 months.

ABSTRACT

Aloe vera is one of the oldest known therapeutic herb belongs to the family Liliaceae commonly known as guar patta. Gel from fleshy leaves of Aloe vera is rich in 200 nutrients which are used in healing the burns, wounds, gastric ulcers, treatment of diabetes and also used in normal functioning of the liver. Aloe vera is a desert plant which needs water in very less quantity. As Aloe vera is second in ranking in drug production in the world. Government of India is also trying to promote Aloe vera as a crop in dry and semi dry regions of India. As it needs very less and cheaper inputs, Aloe farming promises higher economic gains to farmers. But as the plant grows vegetatively the quality planting material is a problem. Tissue culture provides an opportunity in production of quality seedlings. To optimize the regeneration system in Aloe vera, MS based media were tried to induce shoot formation in cultured shoot tip explants. 6-10 cm long offshoots were collected. Shoot tip explants were cut vertically after sterilization in laminar hood and cultured on MS basal media supplemented with various growth regulators. A total of 23 media were tried for shoot regeneration. All the cultures were incubated under fluorescent light. Different concentrations of BAP (2, 5, 10 mg/l) were used and MS medium with 2 mg/l or 5 mg/l BAP exhibited similar response while BAP at 10 mg/l showed poor shoot formation. TDZ when used at 1 mg/l concentration improved percent shoot formation marginally. Multiple shoots were observed on TDZ containing medium and BAP (2.0 mg/l) supplemented medium in 12-15 days. Multiple shoots were obtained in 12 days when 2 mg/l BAP was added along with 0.18 mg/l IAA. The number of multiple shoots ranged from 4 -15 per explant. The regenerated plants developed roots on MS medium supplemented with 0.1mg/l NAA.