The GIS technology is well known for its application in Conservation Sciences. FRLHT has pioneered the use of GIS for guiding focused medicinal plant conservation action. This technology can help the Forest Managers to make informed decisions about conserving specific species both in situ as well as ex situ.

The Informatics group has digitised the map layers of Altitude, Rainfall, Soil types and Forest types for the entire country to help map and analyze the distribution patterns of prioritized medicinal plants of the country. During the year 2008, Geographical Distribution maps in respect of 800 species and Eco-distribution maps in respect of 100 species of conservation concern were prepared. More than 50% of the species selected for mapping correspond to the Red Listed species i.e. threatened with extinction. These have resulted in Geographical Distribution Atlas of Prioritised Indian Medicinal Plants. The Atlas was prepared for its formal release on 11th April 2008.  

Data pertaining to India's exports and imports of commodities, as compiled by DGCIS (Director General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics), reveal various items with their HS (Harmonized system) codes, alongside the annual quantities and values. These HS codes currently being used in such compilations conveniently lump most of the medicinal plant materials under `miscellaneous categories' ignoring to indicate the specific plant entities. Thus, there is a need to address this flaw, by way of developing an improved system of HS-coding, so that the `exported plant material' gets linked to specific plant species and consequently with the sources of supply.  In the absence of such linkage it is not possible to assess the quantum of exported plant materials which are sourced from endangered plant species. 

The Informatics team, during the year focused on this flaw, and studied it. The findings of the study are presented in a Status Report.

A consultancy to prepare a National level Report, on the Demand and Supply of Medicinal Plants in India was awarded to FRLHT by the National Medicinal Plants Board, (Government of India), after competitive bidding during 2006-07. FRLHT created a team drawn from in-house resource persons, made a thorough study across different sample sites in the country. The findings of the study were presented in the final report. This Report was further published as a book titled, "Demand and Supply of Medicinal Plants in India" in March 2008.

In order to disseminate the information on medicinal plants and traditional health practices to different individuals and institutions all around the world, FRLHT has developed many interactive and dynamic websites. The following websites, launched during the previous years, were maintained during the year:

i) Multi-lingual Home Remedies Website (http://www.homeremedy.in)

The Website is designed to promote `healthy living, the natural way' by way of offering to the viewers appropriate advice on many issues related to primary health care. The website has become multi-lingual with the addition of Kannada Edition. Similarly, attempts were made during the year to develop other vernacular versions of the website such as Malayalam, Hindi and Marathi. These versions are expected to be uploaded during the next financial year.

ii) ENVIS (Environmental Information System) on Medicinal Plants of Conservation Concern (http://envis.frlht.org)

The ENVIS centre on conservation of medicinal plants uses the website as its major tool of information dissemination related to conservation of medicinal plants.  The major activities during 2007-2008 were the following:

The ENVIS website was redesigned to enable an easy navigation and for a wider reach. The site is fully search engine optimized.

The centre brought out a booklet titled ‘Medicinal Trees of High Consumption – Need for Resource Augmentation & Sustainable Management’. The booklet provides information on 12 prioritized medicinal trees of India, whose consumption is very high (exceeding 1000 MT/year). 

The centre developed an `online module' which dynamically displays the distribution of a particular species across the states of India. The module contains the Geo-distribution maps of 150 medicinal plants species.

The Website now offers 400 digitized herbarium sheets out of which 150 were added during the year. More than 200 plant images were added to the website, against the target of 150. The centre attended to 611 queries received during the year. The website was updated regularly. The Website witnessed a total hits of 20, 51,689 during the year.

i) Revised version of the Educational CD-ROMs [MoEF-CoE]
TheCD-ROMs titled, `Medicinal plants in Siddha system of medicine', `Medicinal plants in Homeopathy' and `Medicinal plants in Unani system of medicine' were taken up for review. Based on the additional inputs and suggestions by the experts, revised versions of the CD-ROMs were developed.

ii) Inventory of Plants in Ayurveda [MoEF-CoE]
An `Inventory of plants in Ayurveda' has been prepared after a careful scrutiny of all the diverse materials and publications, including the FRLHT database. The inventory contains the botanical name, the available synonyms and correlated Sanskrit names of different medicinal plants in Ayurveda. The Sanskrit names are supported by the Devanagari and Roman scripts with their diacritical marks to denote proper spelling and pronunciation. A report has been prepared based on this Inventory.

In order to substantiate and to help the users to find out the clinical references of these plants, the Inventory also provides corresponding bibliographic references from different Ayurvedic texts, which provide such authentic information. These references are mainly from 20 texts of Ayurveda including the Classical texts such as Caraka samhita, Susruta samhita, Ashtanga sangraha, Ashtanga hrdaya and other major nighantus or lexicons from 1500 BC-1900 AD period. The Inventory which has information on 1587 plants is made available as a CD-ROM.

As a supporting educational tool, this CD-ROM addresses the nature education needs of the high school students, of Bangalore city, Karnataka. The CD-ROM whose primary version was developed during 2006-07, considering the learning needs of these students, was further tested for its usefulness in a participatory way by involving the Biology teachers and students of select schools in Bangalore.

The CD ROM tries to familiarize the students to the various medicinal plants found in their neighborhood, with the help of the local names, botanical names, images of these plants. It focuses on 305 medicinal plants species, found in Bangalore city and contains the following user-friendly modules in it:

a) Herbscope: This module enables the users to figure out the botanical name of a plant with the help of its local name. The module enables this search at 3 levels: regional (Bangalore), state (Karnataka) and national level. It includes more than 26000 local names drawn from 8 different languages.

b) Album: This module allows the students to identify a plant in question with the help of 700 photographs. The search is categoried into Herbs, Shrubs, Trees and Climbers.

c) Greenpad: This is an interactive data entry module that allows the students to record their field observations related to a plant included in the CD-ROM and found in the neighborhood. The students can create exclusive database of their observations on different plants found in their neighborhood. Additionally, it allows the students to insert scanned images of such identified plants.

d) Amruth Home Garden: This module offers handy tips on how to use and grow the medicinal plants for primary health care.

During the year, ten 1-day workshops were conducted to sensitize 1700 students from Bangalore and Andhra Pradesh about the CD-ROM. Appropriate feedback was also obtained from them about the design and userfriendliness of the CD-ROM. It is planned to release the CD-ROM for wider reach.

Members of the Informatics team attended as resource persons in the conference “Aaranyakam” at Palaghat, Kerala on 28th July 2007. The conference was focussing on the issue of ascertaining the identity of medicinal plants used in Ayurveda. The CD-ROM on Plants in Ayurveda was used among the participants as a promotional educational material.

Different kinds of context based outreach activities were initiated during the year in association with other departments of FRLHT, to take the different information products developed under AYUSH supported project.