Conservation of certain indigenous medicinal plant of upper Brahmaputra valley of Assam: Computational Biology approach

Abstract

The change of agricultural practices and other anthropogenic causes has threatened the nature’s unique genetic resources in the verge of extinction. In addition to that very little or no sufficient systematic studies have been done to explore and conserve the medicinal and nutritive potentials of these unique genetic resources. However, there are number of commercially available drugs derived from plant sources and also ever increasing demand for the herbal medicine in recent days in the domestic as well as international market. So there is a distinct need for an easy accessible data collection system that provides detailed scientific information of the plants. Keeping these points on mind computational biology techniques are used to construct web-enabled medicinal plant database system for easy retrieval of taxonomic information, photographs, medicinal properties and bioactive compounds of such important plants in the Upper Brahmaputra valley of Assam for scientific users, researchers and home users who interested in medical plants.