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Ethnobotanical profiling of the medicinal flora of Kotli, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan: Empirical reflections on multinomial logit specifications.

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posted on 2018-05-11, 15:37 authored by Muhammad Shoaib Amjad, Muhammad Arshad, Abdul Saboor, Sue Page, Sunbal Khalil Chaudhari
OBJECTIVE: To report the indigenous people's uses of plants from a multidimensional perspective in a remote area where strong ethnobotanical cultural practices prevail. METHODS: An ethnobotanical survey was conducted in the field during 2014-2016. Ethnobotanical data were gathered from 182 informants through oral interviews and semi-structured questionnaires. The distribution of plants was explored using both descriptive and graphical methods. Further, a Multinomial Logit Specification was applied to find out the probability of the occurrence of diverse utilization of plants in multipurpose domains. RESULTS: The study identified 202 plant species distributed among 71 families and 156 genera. Ethnobotanical data indicate that there are more medicinal (36.96%) uses of plants as compared to all other use categories. The output from the Multinomial Logit Specifications (MLS) model reveals that perennial and non-woody plants are exploited more for medicinal and food uses than annual and woody plants. In the context of ethnomedicinal uses, aerial plant parts particularly leaves are more extensively used for the preparation of herbal recipes as compared to underground parts. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the study emphasize the need to create awareness among the local communities about the conservation status of plant species in order to maintain a sustainable resource of plant-derived materials into the future. The novel econometric approach employed in this study adds a new insightful methodology to the existing body of literature in the field of ethnobotany. We strongly recommend conservation measures, alongside phytochemical and pharmacological studies on the useful plant species identified in this study in order to ensure their sustainable and effective utilization.

History

Citation

Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine, 2017, 10 (5), pp. 503-514

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING/School of Geography, Geology and the Environment/Physical Geography

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine

Publisher

Elsevier

issn

1995-7645

eissn

2352-4146

Acceptance date

2017-04-22

Copyright date

2017

Available date

2018-05-11

Publisher version

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1995764516306113?via=ihub

Language

en

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