An ethnobotanical survey of medicinal and edible plants of Yalo Woreda in Afar regional state, Ethiopia

Abstract

BackgroundThe Afar people inhabit the sub-arid and arid part of Ethiopia. Recurrent drought and invasive encroaching plants are taking out plants that have cultural importance, and threaten the biodiversity and the associated traditional knowledge. Thus, the aim of the current study is to conduct an ethnobotanical survey and document medicinal and edible plants in Yalo Woreda in Afar regional state.MethodsA cross-sectional ethnobotanical study was carried out in eight kebeles of Yalo Woreda from October 2015 to December 2016. One hundred sixty informants were selected using purposive sampling. The data on diseases, medicinal and edible plants were collected using semi-structure interview and group discussion. The statistical methods, informant consensus factor, fidelity level, and preference ranking were conducted to analyze the data.ResultsOne hundred and six plants were reported; gender and age differences had implication on the number of plants reported by informants. The knowledge of medicinal plants among informants of each kebele was not different (p < 0.5) and was not associated in particular with the religious establishment in the kebeles (informant*kebeles, Eta square = 0.19). Family Fabaceae was the major plant species, and shrubs (44%) were dominant plants reported. Leaf (52.94%) and oral (68%) were primary plant part used for remedy preparation and route of application, respectively. The plants with low fidelity values Indigofera articulata (0.25), Cadaba farinosa (0.22), Cadaba rotundifolia (0.19), and Acalypha fruticosa (0.15) were used to treat the category of diseases with high informant consensus value (0.69). Sixteen edible plants were identified that were consumed during wet and dry seasons. Balanites aegyptiaca, Balanites rotundifolia, and Dobera glabra were ‘famine food’ that were collected and stored for years.ConclusionPeople in Yalo Woreda are more dependent on natural resources of the area for their livelihood. The threat of climatic change and encroaching invasive plants on medicinal and edible plants affects the traditional use of plants in the Yalo Woreda. The conservation of the plants in the home garden and natural habitat and integration of edible plants into agroforestry development programs in sub-arid and arid regions has to be encouraged to conserve plants of medical and economic importance.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13002-017-0166-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Medicinal Plants Used for Treating Human and Livestock Ailments in Tiyo District, Arsi Zone of Oromia, Ethiopia

“…A similar observation was also reported by many others [10,39,33]. In general, the result obtained during this study showed that knowledge on medicinal plants increased as the age of the informants increased and it was directly proportional to age increment in agreement with previous reports [40,41,10,42] [41,43,6,38,30,44].…”

“…Previous study has reported similar practices describing the fact that such secret and verbal transfer make the indigenous knowledge or ethnomedicinal knowledge vulnerable to distortion and in most cases some of the lore may be lost at each point of transfer [8]. This has called for the high need for systematic documentation of such useful knowledge [8,38].…”

“…Arsi zone in which women were found to be more knowledgeable on medicinal plants collected from home gardens and men had better knowledge on species collected from the wild [33]. Similarly, the average number of medicinal plants identified by females was less than that identified by males in Yalo District of Afar Regional State, Ethiopia [38]. On the other hand, there was no difference between indigenous knowledge of men and women informants on the use of medicinal plants in s in Ganta Afeshum District, Eastern Zone of Tigray, Ethiopia [45].…”

The Medicinal Plants Used in Anjir Pulang Pisau, Central Kalimantan-Indonesia

“…Various ethnomedicinal studies conducted elsewhere also reported that oral as the predominant route of administration. [26][27][28]…”

Ethnobotanical survey and phytogeographical study of plants species from genus Acacia in Bnin

“…These results show that almost all species from genus Acacia are used in traditional medicine and most ailments treated were ID and DSD. All over the world, the use of Acacia species was also reported in traditional medicine (Zahoor et al, 2017;Kefalew, 2015;Tahani et al, 2018;Teklehaymanot, 2017). Among these species, eight (8) are essentially distributed in the Sudanese region (Northern Benin): A. amythetophylla, A.…”