Quantitative ethnomedicinal study of plants used in the skardu valley at high altitude of Karakoram-Himalayan range, Pakistan

Abstract

BackgroundThe tribal inhabitants of the Skardu valley (Pakistan) live in an area of great endemic botanic diversity. This paper presents the first quantitative ethnomedicinal spectrum of the valley and information on the uses of medicinal plant. This paper aims to analyze and catalogue such knowledge based on Relative Frequency Citation (RFC) and Use Value (UV) of medicinal plants in addition to the configuration of the Pearson correlation coefficient.MethodsThe field study was carried out over a period of approximately 2 years (2011–2013) using semi-structured interviews with 71 informants (most of the informants belonged to an age between 50 and 70 years) in six remote locations in the valley. Ethnomedicinal data was analyzed using frequency citation (FC), relative frequency of citation (RFC) and use value (UV) along with a Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC). Demographic characteristics of participants, ethnobotanical inventory of plants and data on medicinal application and administration were recorded.ResultsA total of 50 medicinal plants belonging to 25 families were reported to be used against 33 different ailments in the valley. The maximum reported medicinal plant families were Asteraceae (7 report species), Lamiaceae (6) , Polygonaceae (4) and Rosaceae (4), the most dominant life form of the species includes herbs (38) followed by shrubs and subshrubs (12), the most frequent used part was leaves (41%) followed by root (26%), flower (14%), fruit (9%), seeds (8%), bulb (1%) and bark (1%), the most common preparation and administration methods were infusion (32%), decoction (26%), paste (18%), herbal juice (17%) and powder drug (7%). The Pearson correlation coefficient between RFC and UV was 0.732 showing highly positive significant association.ConclusionsIn this study, we have documented considerable indigenous knowledge about the native medicinal plants in Skardu valley for treating common ailments which are ready to be further investigated phytochemically and pharmacologically which leads to natural drug discovery development. The study has various socioeconomic dimensions which are associated with the local communities.

An ethnobotanical study of medicinal plants used by ethnic people in Parbat district of western Nepal

“…6). Different plant parts are used in the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 preparation of human ailments which is similar to previous studies (Malla and Chhetri, 2009;Bano et al,2014). Out of 67 families, Lamiaceae and Orchidaceae represented the highest number of medicinal plants (7 species 5.30%), which was followed by Asteraceae (6 species 4.54%), and Fabaceae (5 species 3.84%).…”

Ethnomedicinal plants of Sarigöl district (Manisa), Turkey

“…RFC data analysis RFC and UV scores calculated from the use reports expressed by the rural people about the healing of the different diseases. These RFC and UV were found to be higher in case of some important medicinal species, which could be attributed to the trend of utilization of herbal drugs in the region (Bano et al, 2014;Vijayakumar et al, 2015). The value of RFC covers the ranges from 2% to 49% in the medical use of the taxa.…”

“…This index shows the local importance of each species and it is given by the frequency of citation (FC, the number of informants mentioning the use of the species) divided by the total number of informants participating in the survey (N), without considering the use-categories (Vitalini et al, 2013;Bano et al, 2014;Vijayakumar et al, 2015). The RFC values of the plants with medicinal uses determined in this study are presented in Table 3.…”

“…It was calculated using the formula: UV¼ΣU i /N. Where U i is the number of uses mentioned by each informant for a given species and N is the total number of informants (Tardio and Pardo-de-Santayana, 2008;Bano et al, 2014;Vijayakumar et al, 2015). The UV of the plant taxa in this research is given in Table 3.…”

Ethnobiological Survey of Plants and Animals Used for the Treatment of Acute Respiratory Infections in Children of a Traditional Community in the Municipality of Barbalha, Ceará, Brazil.

“…Descriptive statistics was used for data analysis (simple and percentage rate) and the Relative Frequency of Citation (RFC), widely used in ethnobotanical surveys (Bano et al, 2014) and obtained from the ratio: FC/N, where FC is the number of informants who mentioned species use and N is the total number of informants in the study.…”