Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Herbarium
Azad Jammu Kashmir Medicinal & Aromatic Plants Herbarium (AJKMAPH) is first local herbarium of country which is available in digital form. It serves as a storehouse of reference material, a resource of identification, an adjudicator of accurate botanical names and a comprehensive data bank.It is established in 2014 at Government Boys Degree College Abbaspur Poonch AJK. It is an ongoing project titled; Conservation, Documentation and Digitization of Medicinal Flora of Poonch Area, developed and implemented under the auspices of Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), funded through Agricultural Linkage Program (ALP). Originally, work was started in 2003 but enriched in 2014 and first phase to be completed in 2017. Project’s activities focus on exploration and documentation of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) diversity in the Poonch Area. Herbarium maintains endemic, exotic and invasive species belonging to Angiosperms, Gymnosperms, Bryophytes and Pteridophytes. Initially, about 300 MAPs species are planned to be collected, identified, conserved and preserved as herbarium specimens. At present, 110 MAPs species have been documented. The documentation on remaining species is in progress. Search options for each plant species are available in herbarium. Our herbarium maintains images of voucher specimens as well as a set of images of each plant including flower, inflorescence, leaf dorsal view, leaf ventral view, root, stem and uprooted plant because a single image does not represent all morphological aspects of a plant, which is a unique characteristic of this herbarium. Medicinal usage of MAPs is mostly depends upon local traditional knowledge (Ethano-medicines) and also highlighted through international herbalism literature following Christopher [9], Bakhru [3] [4] and Pharmacongosy. Future perspective of each plant related to drug origin has been mentioned for end users.
Each plant is arranged in alphabetical order. Click on relevant alphabet to visit herbarium. Please visit us and compare this digital herbarium with digital herbariums of other countries.
METHODOLOGY
During research work frequent visits were undertaken by Principal Investigator of project, in Sub-tropical, Temperate, Sub-alpine and Alpine zones, Information on Ethno-botanical and traditional usage, need for herbarium developments, were collected through interviewing and filling questionnaires from local people, Hakeems, Farmers, and Forest Guards. MAPs species were identified with the help of available Taxonomic and Pharmacognosy literature, [1] [15] Flora of Pakistan [7] [14], Flora of China and manuals. International Protocol for Herbarium Sheets Photography (September 2014) has been followed by us which is devised for herbarium sheets at the Mauritius Sugarcane Industry Research Institute Herbarium, France. Taxonomic features are written in very simple language in the interest of end users.
If you interested and want to study actual herbarium specimens, visit Government Boys Degree College Abbaspur, Campus, which is located in Abbaspur, Poonch AJK.
