Abstract
Background: Since early times, the people of Morocco use medicinal and aromatic plants as traditional medicine to heal different human ailments. However, little studies have been made in the past to properly document and promote the traditional ethnomedical knowledge. Objective: This study was carried out in the Rif (North of Morocco), it aimed to establish the catalog of medicinal plants and to identify medicinal and aromatic plant used by the local people to treat diseases, together with the associated ethnomedicinal knowledge. Material and Methods: The ethnomedical information collected was from 1000 local healers using semi-structured interviews, free listing and focus group. Family importance value (FIV), relative frequency of citation (RFC), plant part value (PPV), fidelity level (FL) and informant consensus factor (ICF) were employed in data analysis. Medicinal and aromatic plant were collected, identified and kept at the natural resources and biodiversity laboratory, Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra. Results: During the present study 290 medicinal plant species belonging to 74 families has been documented. The most frequent ailments reported were osteoarticular diseases (ICF = 0.9818). The majority of the remedies were prepared from decoction (38.6%). Leaves were the most frequently used plant part (PPV 0.364) and Rosmarinus officinalis L. (RFC = 0.189) was the specie most commonly prescribed by local herbalists. Conclusions: The results of this study showed the existence of indigenous ethnomedicinal knowledge of medicinal plants in the Moroccan Rif to treat diseases. Further research on phytochemical, pharmacological and toxicological should be considered to discover new drugs from these documented plants.
Highlights
People have long histories on the uses of traditional medicinal and aromatic plants for medical purposes in the world, and nowadays, this is highly actively promoted [1]
A total of 87 MAPs species belonging to 43 botanical families were used to treat human diseases in the study area
Our study revealed that the local traditional healers of Rif, Northern Morocco are rich in ethnomedicinal knowledge and majority of people rely on plant based remedies for common health problems diarrhea
Summary
People have long histories on the uses of traditional medicinal and aromatic plants for medical purposes in the world, and nowadays, this is highly actively promoted [1]. By its biogeographical position, offers a very rich ecological and floristic diversity constituting a true plant genetic reserve, the mountainous regions of Rif and Atlas being the most important areas for endemism. The analysis of the Moroccan medicinal bibliography shows that the data on regional medicinal plants are very fragmentary and dispersed, due to of the few thousand plant species. We conducted this ethnobotanical study in the Moroccan Rif, which has a considerable lithological, structural, biological and floristic diversity. The purpose of the present investigations was to evaluate MAPs that grow in the study area with the aim to contribute to indigenous knowledge of MAPs and to analyze the results concerning the existing relationships between medicinal species and human diseases
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