Monday, September 18, 2017

28000 PLANT SPECIES RECORDED AS EFFECTIVE MEDICINAL TOOL

More and more scientists are recognizing the fact that plants have amazing effect on human health. Herbally Radiant has been promoting this awareness with the help of its powerful formulations to prevent premature aging signs and to brighten up skin in the healthiest natural manner.
The investigative report in BBC magazine highlights how from being natural fire-fighters to potential famine-thwarters, there are four incredible ways that plants could revolutionise our world.
Cross-breeding super plants
When we eat vegetables on our dinner plates, what we’re looking at were once ordinary crops that were grown on a farm. But those farm-grown crops had relatives out in the wild - that were “to our food plants what wolves are to dogs”.But those roguish cousins living in the wild – far away from domesticating farms – have developed resilience to pests, diseases, soil salinity and climate change.
That’s why plant breeders are working to crossbreed these wild crops with our domestic crops to make them just as hardy as their cousins – while still offering us the benefits that tamed plants offer, such as a high yield. 

Cross-breeding wild vegetables with their cultivated counterparts on the farm could create a hybrid super-veggie resilient to pests and disease (Credit: LM Salazar / Crop Trust)
It’s a truly worldwide plan; the countries that have the highest number of wild plant cousins are Brazil, China, and India, while the countries with the highest concentration of them are Azerbaijan, Portugal and Greece. The benefits that this cross-breeding programme could have in developing countries in particular could be indispensable as world population growth reaches over nine billion.
Using plants as medicine
This isn’t anything new – the use of plants is medicine has been known since time immemorial. But are we being too slow to register new uses?
Over 28,000 plant species are currently recorded as being of medicinal use, but fewer than 16% of them are cited in a medicinal regulatory publication. When the World Health Organization last estimated the plant-based medicinal industry’s worth in 2012, it totalled a mind-boggling $83bn (£62bn).
The industry is growing increasingly popular; in Germany, around 90% of the population use herbal medicines that are derived from plants such as foxglove and garlic. But one major problem, of course, is that health regulators are keen to stop the proliferation of unsafe or phony products entering the market; a lazy approach to authentication has already meant that herb names have been confused with those with similar sounding names and patients have ended up ingesting a wildly inappropriate (and potentially lethal) drug.
China is one country trying to stop this. In December 2016, Chinese government officials announced their aim to integrate more traditional Chinese medicine into their healthcare system by 2020, as well as presenting detailed illustrations and descriptions of the source plants to stop any future confusion happening.

If we’re to utilise plants to their full life-saving potential,the researchers make urgent recommendations: sourcing plants from sustainable resources, cultivating them, introducing reliable traceability procedures and secure more effective quality control.
Bananas on steroids
Well, not quite bananas. The enset is a member of the banana family that has been cultivated in Ethiopia for tens of thousands of years – the Ethiopians in fact have over 200 names for it – and it has several different uses. As well as being a staple crop in Africa it can make rope, medicine, shelter, animal feed and clothes, not to mention also providing an ideal microclimate for coffee plants to flourish in. It withstands drought, heavy rain and flooding. Basically – is there anything that this ‘false banana’ can’t do?

But first, they’re going to have to figure out how to gather its seeds – at the moment, farmers take cuttings from the plants to grow more of them, meaning no one actually knows how enset is pollinated. However, once they work out this super banana’s secrets, there’s no telling the good it could do.
Fire-fighting plants
Most people throw burger patties or hot dogs onto a flaming barbecue – Kew Gardens in England instead decided to throw some plants on it.
The flammability of plants is seriously important when you think about wildfires and the devastation that they cause economically, socially and environmentally. It can happen because plant diversity is poor, and also because non-native plants simply haven’t adapted in time to the climate of their new home. But fire is a normal, important process in some ecosystems.

Plants that are likely to tolerate future increases in the frequency of fires are those with a thicker bark, a quick ability to resprout and the presence of serotinous cones; just like a phoenix from the ashes, these cones house seeds which are released into the air if a fire burns away the serotinous resin protecting it, ensuring the survival of the species elsewhere.

Herbally Radiant has been promoting the awareness about the amazing benefits of plants to our health, and especially to our skin. The powerful formulations developed by the R&D team of Herbally Radiant have proven very popular for preventing premature aging signs, rejuvenating cells and maintaining the skin in its best natural shining shape. 

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