Flagship Programme: Threatened Plants Conservation

Threatened Plants Conservation

It is estimated that in India about 1052 species are Red-listed, which also includes several hundreds medicinal plants. Among these, eight species are already extinct and 77 plant species are critically endangerd. For many of these threatened plant species, the major threat is their extremely small population size, over exploitation and degradation of natural habitat. In order to cater the unmet need of the pharma sector, the multiplication and delisting of these threatened plants from various threat categories becomes all the more important. Several CSIR Institutes (CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow, CSIR-Central Drugs Research Institute, Lucknow, CSIR-Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, Lucknow, CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresources Technology, Palampur, CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine, Jammu and CSIR-North Eastern Institute for Science and Technology, Johrat) are already working on large number of medicinal plants which comes under threatened categories. It would therefore be our concerted efforts to delist the large number of threatened medicinal plants, so that there would be no difficulty in the securing of IPR in case of technologies emanating from these plants.Thus unless urgent conservation action is taken up in terms of recovering these species, many of them may be completely lost. In this project, we aim to assess the conservation status of 100 threatened plant species occurring in different bio-geographic regions of India using IUCN ver. 3.1, estimate the genetic variability in Critically Endangered (CR) species, development of DNA bar-code for threatened plant species in question, and mass multiplication of threatened plant species using macro as well as micro-propagation, and development of 100 threatened plant species conservatory at CSIR-NBRI. This Fundamental Basic Research (FBR) project is under consideration for financial support in CSIR New Delhi. The project upon completion would have the following outcomes:

• The conservation status of 100 threatened plants species from different bio-geographic regions of India will be available.
• Genetically diverse populations in case of Critically Endangered (CR) plants will be identified for in-situ conservation based on SSR markers.
• DNA barcoding of 100 threatened plant species will be available.
• Ecological Niche modelling will provide the accurate threat perception operating on the plants species and also identification of species specific habitats.
• Meta-population modelling will provides the data on the current state of the species population in a given landscape by Population Viability Analysis (PVA).
• Protocols for mass multiplication of threatened plants species and its introduction in its natural habitats with the help of forest departments.
• Development of threatened plants conservatory and gene bank at CSIR-NBRI.

List of Threatened Plants of India