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Ethnobotanical Study on Medicinal Plants of Rakhaing Indigenous Community of Cox’s Bazar District of Bangladesh

Shaikh Bokhtear Uddin
Department of Botany, University of Chittagong, Chittagong 4331, Bangladesh

Reshma Sultana Ratna
Department of Botany, University of Chittagong, Chittagong 4331, Bangladesh

Mohammad Omar Faruque
Department of Botany, University of Chittagong, Chittagong 4331, Bangladesh

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

The Rakhaing indigenous community living in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh has long been an admiration of utilizes plants around them in various purpose and they depend on their surrounding vegetation for various purposes in their daily life. An ethnobotanical survey is carried out on the utilization of medicinal plants by Rakhaing community. The information has been documented by interviewing traditional herbalists, various elderly men and women following different ethnobotanical methods. Total 82 plant species in 77 genera under 51 families with their short botanical description, local (Rakhaing) names, medicinal use, mode of preparation and application have been documented. All the voucher specimens have been collected during documentation and preserved at the herbarium of Chittagong University (CTGUH).

Keywords: Rakhaing community, Medicinal plants, Herbal treatments, Bangladesh.

Location: Cox’s Bazar District of Bangladesh

Start Date:

End Date:

Program Area: Development of Host and Medicinal Plants

Commodity: Medicinal Plants

Objectives:

The wealth of traditional knowledge of the indigenous people concerning their natural systems and environment, their knowledge on utilization and maintenance of plant resources on a long-term basis without damaging or destroying their habitats. Ethnobotanical data can be utilized by economic botanists to discover new plant resources, to provide fresh ideas for environment planners, as a tool for basic selection of plant species for development of drugs by pharmacologists, phytochemists and clinicians, as a new source of history through the study of plant names by linguists, as a source for locating new germplasm for agriculturists, etc. Some works on ethnobotany performed only in last decades of 20th century. Kadir in 1990 worked on medicinal plant of Bangladesh and their conservation strategy.

Methodology:

2. Methods The success of ethnobotanical documentation depends on the cooperative relationship between the researcher and local informants. It is very important to locate knowledgeable informants for the study of ethnobotany. Techniques are tools, and the choice of using one over the other depends on the aims and theoretical approach of the study, field conditions, and expertise of the researcher. Documentation has been made by taking random interviews of the herbalists, elderly men and women. In field interview technique, the informants accompany with the author and data has been collected in the field. To obtain medicinal plant use information, plant interview technique has been used in the maximum cases, because the informants are sometime too busy or don’t think himself fit to accompany the author in the field. Fresh plant samples have been collected and brought to the informants. The informants identified some of the plants and describe their uses. This method is less time consuming than field interviews and the plant interview allows more informants to be included in a given period of time. By adopting open-ended and semi-structured question technique interviews have been taken and noted and recorded with a digital voice recorder. The reliability of information on each plant was confirmed through repeated interviews. All voucher specimens have been collected during documentation and preserved in the Chittagong University Herbarium (CTGUH). The specimens have been identified consulting with the experts, through several herbarium studies by comparing herbarium specimens and studying several available literatures. The description and the current nomenclature have been compared with recent book-“Dictionary of Plant Names of Bangladesh.

Source of Information: Journal of Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry 2013; 2 (4):164-174

Article Link (Online Journal):

Funding Source:

1.

Budget:

Total Budget (Tk.) :

Achievement/Findings:

Day by day, they lost their previous glorious heritage of plant use Knowledge, lack of proper documentation and the present generation is less interested to continue it. The younger generation especially tends to be more open too health centers or doctors than their parents, and they do not know how to prepare or referred to the diseases/ illness. The present generation lost the interest to continue their parental profession because it does not provide them proper financial support to their livelihood. Most of them become modernized and dependent in synthetic medicine. Plant resources become less available to meet their present necessity because of deforestation and destroying the plant habitat by different anthropogenic activities. If this condition continue; their traditional plant use knowledge, basically knowledge of medicinal plant use is under threat and may be disappearing rapidly. Now, it is a burning necessary to document their plant use information to protect them from disappearing and revive their glorious plant use heritage. These information can be the source, and help the researchers for the discovery of new drugs.

Knowledge Management: Journal