Ethno-botanical practices and conservation of endangered plants in the North East: A Discussion

The conservation of ethnobotanical resources and the wild variants of crop plants, floricultural species, and medicinal plants would be of importance while formulating future plant breeding programs with an emphasis on discovering a native germ pool and its conservation as also to create a germ plasm library through which related information from surrounding lands can be added and shared to promote socio-economic improvement and interactive stability in the region. Through this conversation we would aim to find answers to the following questions: Could you tell us about the native medicinal and floricultural plants with significant economic importance that is being grown in this region? How will the knowledge of ethnobotany and studies related to native practices of growing these plants help in the conservation and rejuvenation of the otherwise endangered and almost close to extinction plant variety in this region? How can the existing knowledge of traditional cropping practices be perpetrated amongst the common people while encouraging them to follow these methods? Can these methods be used to introduce micro-propagation of important and relatively unknown plants to a level where it can be turned into a cottage industry? Since the climatic conditions are ambient for using and promoting plastic house/ greenhouse cultivation of plants do you envisage this as a possibility to promote economic stability?