The project on Neighborhood Medicinal Plant of Bangalore App presents a user friendly interface for android mobiles system that introduces school children of Bangalore city to 330 common medicinal plants and its connection to health traditions. These are native and exotic plants of Bangalore city which are seen as Avenues, landscaping elements, home herbal gardens, religious premises, on tank and lake bunds, pavements etc. The user will be able to know the botanical names, common names in various languages, family, habit, medicinal uses, description, appearance, and other details, and will be able to view images as well. The application provides users to search by “life forms” or “habit” categories of medicinal plants, i.e. herb, shrub, tree and climber. On clicking a particular category, the list of plants belonging to the selected habit would be displayed.

Village Botanists course is for people who like to identify and document their resource and sustainably use for their health and livelihood. So far, skills of more than 300 community members have been developed through this course. This has resulted in a network of Para- taxonomists across 12 states. The course has helped them in augmenting their skills in terms of scientific identification of plants and local resources, the threatened plants and its conservation needs, documentation of traditional knowledge and benefit sharing regimes. They have been engaged as field guides for ecotourism activities, in forest surveys, in developing working plans and also as resource persons by local Biodiversity Management Committees for ethno botanical documentation.

It is estimated in India that between 40-70% of the local flora is used human and veterinary health care. (Shankar, 1996). This puts lot of pressure on the resources, since they are extracted for use in food, fuel as well as medicine. In order to conserve medicinal plants genepool in wild, in-situ conservation sites are established. Over two decades and more, FRLHT, MOEF&CC, DANIDA, UNDP, NMPB, State Forest Department and State Medicinal Plants Board have established 108 MPCA (Srinivasamurthy et al. 2003) across India in states such as Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Orissa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu.

Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs), in addition to forming an important resource base for a variety of industrial products, play a very significant role in the local rural livelihoods. Himachal Pradesh is privileged in having a bountiful of this Nature’s gift, which is housed in its varied forests spread across its four major agro-climatic zones.

Island Biodiversity
The selected theme carries special significance, coinciding with the designation by the United Nations General Assembly of 2014 as the "International Year of Small Island Developing States"

An estimated 50,000 – 70,000 plant species are used in traditional and modern medicine throughout the world. These species make an essential contribution to healthcare, provide an important source of income to rural harvesters, and, along with species used more for their aromatic properties, fuel a major industry in herbal products, pharmaceuticals and fragrances.

Nearly every human being benefits from medicines derived from wild plants. The poor in developing countries are particularly reliant on plant-based medicines and frequently also on the income provided by harvest of plants for sale. However, many wild plant species are at risk from overuse and habitat loss and so are the healthcare systems and livelihoods they support. The decline in plant populations is often the result of demand within urban and foreign markets, rather than to meet the healthcare needs of the local population: demand for natural products in food, cosmetics and medicinal market sectors is growing worldwide, posing socio-economic problems, and opportunities, in countries of origin, as well as ecological problems.

The traffic network is the World's largest widllife trade monitoring program with offices covering most parts of the world. TRAFFIC (Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Common) is a joint venture of WWF and IUCN to monitor trade in wild plants and animals. It works in close co-operation with the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of the wild fauna and flora (CITES).

Cycas beddomi Dyer is a global endemic of Sheshachalam Hills (formerly Tirupati-Kadapa Hills), belongs to family Cycadaceae, is the only Cycad species of India listed critically endangered by IUCN (IUCN, 2007).

Two years back, we meet Paala at his Kyongnosa Herbal Nursery, Sikkim. We were touched by his caring, touch, concern, commitment towards medicinal plants he raised in the nursery.

The industrial demand for the medicinal plants resources has been on the rise due to the Worldwide buoyancy in the herbal sector.

As per "Demand and Supply of Medicinal Plants in India" (Ved, D.K. & G. S. Goraya), a study supported by National Medicinal Plants Board, 960 plants are in trade. Amongst them, 178 of them fall under high volume trade or consumption category.

Sacred Seeds is a network of sanctuaries preserving biodiversity and plant knowledge through living gardens containing locally important plants, focusing on medicinal plants, but also include plants of ceremonial, food and craft value. FRLHT is also part of the Sacred Seeds community and Medicinal plants garden is one of the 30 Foundational Gardens all over the world (only 2 in India) featured on their website.

One of the very important exported medicinal plants of India that has become endangered within a very short span of the last 50 years is Gloriosa superba L., the codified systems of Indian medicine as well as in folk and tribal medicine. The root is used as a germicide, to cure ulcers, piles, hemorrhoids, inflammation, scrofula, leprosy, dyspepsia, worms infestation, flatulence, intermittent fevers, debility arthritis and against snake poison.

Historically, all medicinal preparations were derived from plants, whether in the simple form of plant parts or in the more complex form of crude extracts, mixtures, etc. Today, a substantial number of drugs are developed from plants. The majority of these involve the isolation of the active ingredient (chemical compound) found in a particular medicinal plant and its subsequent modification. A semi-synthetic analogue of such a compound could typically be a useful pharmaceutical product.

IPRs are meant to assure rewards to innovators and are claimed to have been an important driving force behind the rapid industrial growth in the developed world.

In terms of the volume and value of medicinal plants exported, India ranks second in the world. Data on exports of medicinal plants from India over the years 1990-91 to 1993-94, consolidated by Agricultural and Processed Food Products Development Authority of the Ministry of Commerce lists 21 commodity groups.

The dramatic increase in exports of medicinal plants in the past decade testifies to the worldwide interest in these products as well as in traditional health systems. Records over the last 10 years have shown that Indian exports of medicinal plants have trebled. But, as these plants are predominantly of wild origin, hundreds of species are now threatened with extinction because of over-harvesting, destructive collection techniques, and conversion of habitats to crop-based agriculture. Open access to medicinal plants in the wild is perhaps one of the main reasons for the current unsustainable levels of harvesting.