Natarajan Nirmalkumar
.H.N.Senthikumara Nadar College, India
Title: An Ethnoveterinary Survey of Medicinal Plants Used by the Traditional healers in Virudhunagar District, Tamilnadu (India)
Biography
Biography: Natarajan Nirmalkumar
Abstract
The present study was aimed to document the medicinal plants which were used to cure diseases in cattle by the traditional healers in Virudhunagar district, Tamil nadu (India). Information on medicinal plants was collected from the traditional healers by adopting semi-structured questionnaire and through open-ended interview. It is evident from the data that leaves constituted the major plant part used (52%) followed by whole plant (34%) and barks (14%). These plants were used to treat appetites, bloat, fever, ephemeral fever, diarrhoea, dysentery, cough, foot and mouth diseases. About 25 traditional healers were interviewed. From this study, a total of 60 plant species belonging to 26 families were used and described along with drug preparation mode of administration, dosage and duration of the treatment. The main purpose of this study was not only documenting the ethnomedicinal plants used by traditional healers but also maintain with traditional knowledge for the conservation and sustainable utilization of the promising medicinal plants in these area and also for effective treatment of various ailments in cattle.