Inventory of Herbal Plants in BukSU Botanical Gardens

The first botanical gardens in Europe were established for the study of medicinal, poisonous, and herbal plants by students of medicine or pharmacy at universities. As the natural sciences became increasingly important in the 19th Century, botanical gardens additionally took on the role of public educational institutions. Since then, learning from living nature with the aim of developing technical applications, namely biomimetics, has played a special role in botanical gardens. Sir Joseph Paxton designed rainwater drainage channels in the roof of the Crystal Palace for the London World’s Fair in 1881, having been inspired by the South American giant water lily (Victoria amazonica). The development of the Lotus-Effect® at the Botanical Garden Bonn was inspired by the self-cleaning leaf surfaces of the sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera). At the Botanic Garden Freiburg, a self-sealing foam coating for pneumatic systems was developed based on the self-sealing of the liana stems of the genus Aristolochia. Currently, botanical gardens are both research institutions and places of lifelong learning. Numerous botanical gardens provide biomimetics trails with information panels at each station for self-study and guided biomimetics tours with simple experiments to demonstrate the functional principles transferred from the biological model to the technical application. We present eight information panels suitable for setting up education about biomimetics and simple experiments to support guided garden tours about biomimetics.

BACKGROUND: Nature has been a soul source of therapeutic pharmaceutics for a long time and a notable number of advanced pharmaceutics have been invented from this source. Numerous drug leads were identified with the contribution of combinatorial and other allied field experts in the traditional medicine field. The World Health Organization (WHO) characterizes complementary medication as the “wide range of heath practice approaches for prevention, diagnosis and treatment”. However, there is an urgent necessity to validate the obtained information by employing various advanced techniques and tools before it has applied for drug discovery or as effective therapeutics in the clinic along with existing therapies. AIM: Hence, vigorous investigations on herbal plants are required to assess their pharmacological properties and efficacy. India is one of the richest emporia of herbal plants and termed as ‘Botanical Garden’ of the world because of its long history in the traditional knowledge on herbal plants and significant contribution and application in the modern medical practice. Ethno pharmacological evidence measured as an effective tool in the novel discovery of novel drug leads from herbal plants and is a pre-requisite for the practice of plant derived active secondary metabolites. The members of the Acanthaceae family have therapeutic importance owing to the existence of many active secondary bioactive principles or novel phytoconstituents. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present study embarked into Andrographis alata (AA), one of the less explored but well prescribed traditional plants and validated its medicinal properties using various techniques. RESULTS: Since, other species of Andrographis, possessed ample alkaloids and diterpenoids which exhibited varied therapeutic properties which include pharmacological and antimicrobial activities, this AA less investigated multiple aspects including its phyto-screening. CONCLUSION: The phytochemicals obtained from AA with its multifaceted activities may serve the ideal therapeutic as well as an analogue for many combinatorial drugs. This study also justified the traditional values in the complementary system and therapeutic values. However, further investigations on its various bioactive principles and their mechanism of action are highly warranted.

Four new species of <i>Phyllosticta</i>, one new species of <i>Pseudocercospora</i>, and one new combination in <i>Passalora</i> from Japan

Four new species of Phyllosticta, one new species of Pseudocercospora, and one new combination in Passalora from Japan

Madhya Pradesh is rich in plant wealth and endemic flora.As a part of conservation programme, institute has established an arboretum-cum-botanic garden in 1976, covering an area of 7.34 ha.The garden complex includes various sections situated in the campus and nursery.The main forest botanic garden is situated in 4.25 ha area and houses a wide array of forest flora including trees, shrubs, climbers and herbal plant species in various sections.Of the total species planted, over 50% were threatened and ascribed with conservation value.The garden was of scientific and educational utility.The institute provides diploma and degree courses in collaboration with Universities and colleges.The institute forest botanic garden has been registered under the network of Indian Botanic Gardens in 2005.It was one among the 140

Opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L.) has its importance as a plant based natural pain re‐ liever from the time dating back to early civilization till today. Its pain relieving properties had been described in various books of unani, allopathy and ayurvedic medication system. Today our pharmaceutical industries solely depend on opium poppy for their crude resour‐ ces for manufacturing of pain killing drugs. The medical practitioners around the world routinely prescribe important life saving drugs, are the secondary metabolites produced as a result of complex plant metabolism. The important life saving drugs are mostly derived from five major alkaloids viz., morphine, codeine, thebaine, noscapine and papaverine which are present in opium latex in ample amount [1]. According to a report from an inter‐ national organization i.e. WHO (World Health Organization), about 85% of the population in developing countries depend on herbal plants for curatives, medicinal and other medico related applications. India being one of the twelve mega biodiversity centers of the world is fully fledged with diverse array of herbal and medicinal plants which makes it “Botanical Garden of World”. About 10,000 different medicinal plant species are found in India among which opium poppy occupies the highest place in terms of food (seeds) and pharmaceuticals (alkaloids). These valuable alkaloids are mainly extracted in India from green unripe capsu‐ les by making incision upto 1-2 mm in the epidermal wall of the capsule (Figure 1), but glob‐ ally it is extracted from the dried capsule which is called CPS (Concentrated poppy straw) system. In CPS system, the dried capsules along with eight inches of peduncle are harvested and seeds are threshed. The remaining husk is used to extract various alkaloids. The whole plant parts of opium poppy are valuable in terms of food, medicine, vegetable and as brew‐

In the last few years there has been an exponential growth in the field of herbal medicine and these drugs are gaining popularity both in developing and developed countries because of their natural origin and less side effects. Many traditional medicines in use are derived from medicinal plants, minerals and organic matter .The World Health Organization (WHO) has listed 21,000 plants, which are used for medicinal purposes around the world. Among these 2500 species are in India, out of which 150 species are used commercially on a fairly large scale. India is the largest producer of medicinal herbs and is called as botanical garden of the world .The current review focuses on herbal drug preparations and plants used in the treatment of different chronic dieses in the world. The use of Ayurvedic medicines is common in both adults and children and is increasing in many areas of the world. This paper will discuss the benefits with use of herbal medicines as Antidiabetic activity. KEYWORDS: Medicinal plant, Antidiabetic activity, Diabetes mellitus

Dendrobium, a flagship collection of the Liwa Botanical Garden, is an endemic flora of the Southern Sumatra that requires preservation. One of the challenges in its conservation and potential development is the molecular identification. This molecular identification utilizes DNA barcoding with the rDNA-ITS marker as a practical, rapid, accurate, effective, and efficient alternative, complementing previous species-level identification results based on morphological characteristics. Amplification results from 5 selected samples showed specific bands measuring 300 bp. Sequence data analysis using BioEdit and MEGA V.11.0.11 software with 1000 bootstraps grouped all accessions into the same main cluster with a similarity range of 94–100%. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that accession D2 is similar to D. signatum from Japan (AB593662.1), and accession D3 to D. densiflorum (HQ114255), D4 to D. nobile (LC011413.1), accession D6 to D. trigonopus (KF143730.1), and accession D12 to D. faciferum (LC192955.1) from China. The results of this study will enrich the taxonomic and phylogenetic data of Dendrobium, which is essential for conservation and serves as a foundation for its development as a medicinal herbal plant.

Sambucus chinensis, belonging to the Caprifoliaceae family, is an economically large herb plant that is widely cultivated in southern China for its good ornamental characteristics, edible properties, and medicinal values. In July 2021, symptoms of leaf spot were observed on Sambucus chinensis plants in two fields of Chongqing Medicinal Botanical Garden (29º8'26" N, 107º13'23" E) in Nanchuan city, Chongqing, China. Disease incidence was approximately 35 and 50% for each field. The symptoms were initially yellow or black irregular spots on leaves, and then increased to larger dark brown lesions. Finally, the entire infected leaf was blighted, withering, curl and abscission. Ten blight leaves were randomly sampled from fields. Tissues were cut into small pieces and surface sterilized with 75% ethanol for 30 s and sterilized in 2% sodium hypochlorite for 2 min, rinsed thrice with sterile distilled water, plated on potato dextrose agar (PDA) plates, and incubated at 25°C for 7 days in the dark. Later, 20 isolates were obtained from the infected leaves and had similar characteristics. Three isolates were randomly selected (CQ81, CQ82, CQ83) for the further study. Colonies on PDA were olive-green to brown with a velvety texture. Conidia (n=30) were pale- to olive-brown, smooth to verruculose and produced in long, branched chains which were easily disarticulate, single celled, and elliptical to limoniform, and measured as 2.51~4.29 × 1.63~2.14 μm. Conidiophores were solitary, straight or flexous, often unbranched. The DNA of three isolates were extracted and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and translation elongation factor 1-alpha (TEF1-α) were sequenced using primer pairs ITS1/ITS4 (White et al. 1990) and EF1-728F/EF1-986R (Carbone and Kohn 1999), respectively. The sequences of three isolates were 100% identical, and one representative isolate CQ82 were deposited in GenBank (ON387641, ITS; and ON409522, TEF). BLASTn analysis of these sequences showed 99 to 100% nucleotide identity with the sequences of C. cladosporioides CPC 14705 in Korea (Bensch et al. 2010). Phylogenetic analysis using Neighbor-joining method and concatenated sequences (ITS +TEF1) with MEGA7 placed isolate CQ82 in C. cladosporioides with 99% bootstrap support. On the basis of morphological and molecular characteristics, the isolates were identified as C. cladosporioides (Bensch et al. 2010; Nam et al. 2015). A total of sixteen healthy potted plants of S. chinensis were conducted for the pathogenicity test. Eight plants were selected and one shoot of each plant was randomly used for inoculation. Leaves from the shoot of each plant were brushed with 106 conidia/ml suspension of isolate CQ82. Another 8 plants were performed in the same procedure, inoculated with sterile distilled water as control. All plants were covered with plastic bags for two days and then arranged in a greenhouse with 80% relative humidity at 25°C. The pathogenicity test was repeated thrice. After 15 days inoculation, the similar symptoms were observed on the inoculated leaves, whereas controls remained healthy. The pathogen was reisolated from blight tissue and identified as C. cladosporioides by the methods described above. Although this fungus was previously reported to cause leaf disease on many plants (Meneses et al. 2018; Sun et al. 2017), this is the first report of C. cladosporioides causing leaf blight on S. chinensis in China. This study will establish a foundation for controlling the disease.