Electronic resources (ER) for information retrieval of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) research in the Digital Era

Abstract

With the growing worldwide in internet conservation, cultivation and use of medicinal, aromatic and other related groups of plants, there has been a four-fold increase in the volume of literature published on these crops during last two decades. This dynamic scenario demands constant updated inflow, documentation and management of accrued of knowledge, which is now-a-days largely available on electronic media and can be accessed through E-journals, scholarly databases, information gateway internet, E-Books, E-magazine and E-Newsletters. The current issues in MAPs research largely revolve around the production, post harvest management, value-chain alignments, profitability, efficiency and sustainability. To meet the challenges and requirements of globalization, intellectual property rights, agri-export, market intelligence and related issues adequately and successfully, developing countries like India must reorient their R&D priorities on a real time scale for which tools for fast retrieval of information must be developed for which refined on priority. An organized method for retrieval of nascent information is likely to play a very crucial role in this mission. But most of the information is highly scattered in various kind of information resources and their retrieval is so complex and cost intensive that it may not be affordable by every developing country. Therefore, efforts have been made in this paper to identify and list the electronic resources which are exclusive in nature is and are freely available on internet.