Medicinal plant biodiversity and ecosystem services
The history of human beings is intimately linked to the plant world. Members of primitive societies have had to depend on the plants in their environment to survive.
For many millennia, through curiosity and experimentation, they have acquired an extraordinary knowledge about the properties and uses of plants, whether as food, clothing, shelter, transportation, to improve tools and hunting techniques, or even to protect against adversity. The benefits we receive from our ecosystems naturally or through their management are called ecosystem services.
The science that studies the relationship between humans and plants is ethnobotany, whose three main objectives are:
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Contribute to the knowledge of plant diversity, understanding that the knowledge on the uses, applications and management of natural resources is an inseparable part of the general knowledge on biological diversity itself.
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Contribute to the inventory and dissemination of cultural diversity. With the industrial development and the withdrawal of rural life and practices, an ancestral culture, which is specific to each people, is lost. The progressive distancing from nature, or at least part of it, inevitably leads to the loss and forgetting of the names and uses of plants.
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The programs of study ethnobotanicals are a source of information to consider when selecting plants for future phytochemical and pharmacological programs of study . Natural products isolated from plants have provided clinically active drugs over time. On the other hand, we are currently witnessing a renewed interest in medicinal plants and natural products.
Several BIOMA researchers are working in the field of ethnobotany to try to establish the therapeutic potential of many of these plants as antioxidants, anticholinesterase agents, antidiabetics or important antifungals. The resulting extracts obtained from the plants are used to prevent, mitigate and cure diseases, as well as for incorporation into foods (functional foods). Therefore, this line of research has as goal to improve the knowledge based on ecosystem services and to stimulate the integration of this knowledge in the improvement of human welfare.