Abstract:
With the present volume we want to give a survey of the excellent research work fulfilled in the Vth International Symposium on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants and Spices.
The symposium held in India - between 23–26 February, 1985 - was organized by the activists of our Section, and it was one of the most important events in the history of the Section.
First of all because we met outside of Europe, secondly because this was the largest in terms of participants and lectures.
The President of India, the Governor of West Bengal and its Chief Minister and other Ministers greeted the occasion, and its organizing chairman Prof.
Dr.
S.K. Chatterjee.
Two plenary and 15 invited lectures were surrounded by 210 other reports on scientific achievements, in 6 sections.
It is evident that only the best part of this huge program can be published here.
The most important result of this symposium consisted not only in scientific achievements but in collective discussions and frankness by exchange of views on questions of our professional branch as well.
I fell therefore it is indispensable to publish the recommendations of our Plenary Session, which follows here:
Recommendations of the Vth International Symposium on Medicinal, Aromatic and Spice Plants
Due to the fact that ISHS is a horticultural society, all aspects of plant production and breeding are of priority.
Besides, the development on pharmacy, medicine, cosmetics and flavouring has to be taken into consideration as far as secondary plant products are concerned.
Therefore, the discussions resulted in the following recommendations:
- According to the Washington-Convention of 1973 (Protection against extinction), efforts are necessary to domesticate the large number of wild collected medicinal and aromatic plants.
A special attention may be given to the outstanding but diminishing flora in India and the Himalaya regions.
Concurrently with replacing the wild collection by systematic cultivation lays/orders may be established to restrict the commercial use of wild plants.
- Breeding programmes for medicinal and aromatic plants have to be forced:
- to meet the international quality standards concerning content and composition of secondary plant products;
- to increase yield, productivity and pest/disease resistance of the plants.
The working group Genetics and Breeding should be asked to compile and international catalogue of available varieties, cultivars and/ or types of medicinal, aromatic and spice plants.
National and International "gene banks" should be requested on conservation of less used varieties of cultivated medicinal and aromatic plants.
- Other major areas like agronomy, developmental physiology, pathology and tissue culture aspects should be stressed to ensure improvement of quality of plantations of Medicinal, Aromatic and Spice plants.
The working groups "Quality" and "Cultivation" are required to line out recommendations according to "GMP-rules" containing e.g. cultivation methods, disease and pest control, harvesting and post harvest handing for medicinal, aromatic and spice plants.
As far as necessary, new working groups should be established to assist in compiling the data.
- A working group "Economics" should be established to collect input/output data of medicinal, aaaromatic and spice crops in different zones and regions and ISHS should activity co-operate in replacing a stagnant medicinal and aromatic plants' cultivation by new (better) varieties.
- The governments of the ISHS member countries as well as national and international research and development organizations are requwsted to support any activities in the above mentioned applied research work.
Peter Tétényi
Chirman Section for
Medicinal and Aromatic Plants
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