BIOPROSPECTING: EXPLORING OUR ONLY RENEWABLE NATURAL RESOURCE
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| Title | BIOPROSPECTING: EXPLORING OUR ONLY RENEWABLE NATURAL RESOURCE |
| Authors | |
| Abstract | Biodiversity is our only renewable natural resource. Long time ago our ancestors found all kinds of uses for plants, microorganisms, etc. But as we are so used to our daily life, most people do not realize that it is based on these natural resources. We all know that milk comes from a factory! But in fact we use plants and other organisms for the production of e.g. food, medicines, dyes, flavours, fragrances, agrochemicals, clothing, paper, as well as for construction, fuel and many other applications. Much of the economic activities in the world are based on this. So we should be very grateful with the heritage of our ancestors. Still there is a lot of this traditional knowledge that has not yet been really explored, e.g. there is an estimated number of medicinal plants of 40,000-70,000 species, most of which have never been studied in detail. Using this knowledge in combination with our powerful scientific tools there are many possibilities for developing novel products and concepts from biodiversity. Biodiversity as source for developing novel medicines will be discussed in some more detail. |
| Publisher | African Ethnomedicines Network |
| Date | 2009-06-07 |
| Source | African Journal of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative medicines (AJTCAM) ABSTRACTS OF THE WORLD CONGRESS ON MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC PLANTS, CAPE TOWN NOVEMBER 2008 |
| Rights | Articles can be used for educational and non-comercial purposes. The copyrights of articles are retained by the authors with publication rights granted to AJTCAM. |