Documentation and Quantitative Analysis of Ethnomedicinal Plants Used by Some Selected Hmar Tribe of NC Hills, Northeast India

Prakash Roy Choudhury, Euniky Kungate, Abhijit Mitra, Deepa Nath, Anupam Das Talukdar and Manabendra Dutta Choudhury

Ethnobotany and Medicinal Plant Research Laboratory, Department of Life Science & Bioinformatics, Assam University, Silchar - 788 011. India

Corresponding author email: drmdc@bioinfoaus.ac.in

[Received: 13 February 2016]

Abstract: Hmar tribe, in most of the remote areas of NC hills, Northeast India still use medicinal plants for their primary needs in all medical aspects despite fastest urbanization. This indigenous therapeutic knowledge of the community is fading away rapidly due to lack of proper documentation. Present investigation has been made to document the plants used by the Hmar tribe to treat different diseases and to determine their relative importance by quantitative analysis. The study was based on ethnomedicinal field survey covering a period of I year from January, 2015 to January, 2016. The ethnomedicinal information was collected by using semi-structured questionnaires from different medicine man. Collected data were analyzed through relative frequency of citation (RFC) and informant consensus factor (Fic) to determine medicinally significant plants. A total 102 plant species of different genus has been documented in the present investigation. The most used plant part is leaf and medicine is often taken internally. The top three plants with higher RFC value documented during the survey may be taken under consideration for further pharmacological study. Moreover, continued documentation concerning conservation and sustainable use of Hmar medicinal plant heritage is required, which should be publicized to younger generation.

Keywords: Medicinal plants, RFC, Fc Hmar tribe, NC hills, Northeast India