Title: “Medicinal and Aromatic Plants – State of the art and chances for cooperation” 

Special crops medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs)

• less than 5 food plants (sugar cane, rice, wheat, corn, potato) save more than half of the world harvested yield
• MAPs comprise 50-80,000 species (from 2.5 million in total) From this 5,000-6,000 species are of commercial interest.
• Food plants: only some chemical groups were used (carbohydrates, fatty oils and proteins)
• In MAPs numerous very different products of the secondary metabolism establish the value.
• Of the commercially interesting MAPs 90% are collected from the wild,
• but 60-70% in terms of quantity came from cultivation of only some species.

This special situation resulted in

• low special knowledge about therapeutic effects, genetic variability and phytopathology
• For some species the process of domestication is ongoing
• Only a few species are under intensive breeding

For the complete presentation, click here for PDF, or watch the video below.