TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE OF FARMERS ON MEDICINAL PLANTS AND ITS ADOPTION IN MAMIT DISTRICT OF MIZORAM

Medicinal plants, also called medicinal herbs, have been discovered and used in traditional medicine practices since prehistoric times. Plants synthesise hundreds of chemical compounds for functions including defence against insects, fungi, diseases, and herbivorous mammals. Traditional healers have used several plants to treat various diseases over the years and use of many of these plants as medicine is described in Ayurvedic texts. Many diseases including cancer, leprosy, syphilis, all types of fever, children's abdominal disorders, elephantiasis and hydrocele have been treated using botanical sources. The plants synthesize several non-nutritive phytochemicals for different purposes and these have been reported to be beneficial as they possess various medicinal activities in humans. These phytochemicals are primary or secondary metabolites with varying biological activities and they are usually the main active principles present in plants. It has been estimated that in developed countries such as United States, plant drug constitute as much as 25% of the total drugs, while in fast developing countries such as India and China the contribution is as much as 80%. Thus, the economic importance of medicinal plants is much more to India than to the rest of the world. These countries provide two third of the plants used in modern system of medicine and the health care system of rural population depend on the indigenous system of medicine. Hence the present study was undertake in order to find out the adoption level of the medicinal farmers towards improved variety and technology with respect to socio-economic profile of the farmers of Mamit block of Mamit District, Mizoram. The Study revealed that most of the respondents (43.33%) per cent have medium adoption level followed by 28.34 per cent of respondents belonged to low Adopted category whereas 28.33 per cent fell in high adopted category.