Role of Agroforestry in Management and Conservation of Medicinal Trees in Bihar, India

摘要

Medicinal plants have always played a vital role in the treatment of various human ailments. Day by day, they are becoming more useful and popular because of being non-narcotic, having no side effects, easy availability at affordable costs and eco-friendly nature. Due to over exploitation, improper collection, habitat destruction, deforestation, invasion of exotic weeds, many medicinal plants have become threatened / endangered and the remaining ones are gradually coming under different threat categories. However, they can be managed and conserved merely by integrating them into agroforestry. To assess the feasibility of this measure in Bihar, a survey has been conducted in different crop fields of the state. The outcome of the study reveals that the integration of medicinal trees in agroforestry is rather an ideal approach for proper management and conservation of plant resources with medicinal values. The important medicinal trees like Acacia nilotica (Babool), Aegle marmelos (Bel), Albizia lebbeck (Siris), Annona squamosa (Sharifa), Azadirachta in-dica (Neem), Bauhinia variegata (Kachnar), Bombax ceiba (Semul) Butea monosperma (Palas), Cassiafis-tula (Amaltas), Cocos nucifera (Nariyal), Cardia dichotoma (Lasora), Dalbergia sissoo (Shisham), Emblica officinalis (Amla), Gmelina arborea (Gambhar), Madhuca longifolia (Mahua), Moringa oleifera (Sahjan), Syzygium cumini (Jamun), Tamarindus indica (Imli), Terminalia alata (Asan), Terminalia arjuna (Arjun), Terminalia bellirica (Bahera), Terminalia chebula (Harara), Vitexnegundo (Sinwar), Ziziphus mauritiana (Ber), act as the integral component of agroforestry in the province. These valuable trees perform very well in agroforestry as they avail management practices of crops and necessary conditions of conservation. Therefore, agroforestry should be encouraged and familiarized to manage and conserve medicinal trees in Bihar.