Thursday, 7 July 2011

COMMERCIALISATION OF WILD PLANTS TO SAVE BIODIVERSITY FROM EXTINCTION

Plants of various species like the mondia whitei, ocimum kilimanscharicum and aloe vera have been over exploited in the recent past by the communities living around them and the middlemen who benefit a lot from the sale of this plant extracts.
Domestication of this plants is the way forward in protecting them from extinction, this could be done by teaching farmers on how to cultivate this wild plants commercially, this would reduce a scenario of people extracting the plants directly from their habitat and would help to prevent species loss. The other advantage of commercializing wild flora is that enterprises will earn more money through value addition. Example is of Aloe vera which can be added to various  beauty products among others. So the need of the farmers to directly harvest the plants directly from their habitat reduces and provides them an alternative source of income hence prevent them from becoming extinct.
Though the possibility of loosing plant diversity remains high, because once the plant has been domesticated it becomes different from its wild counterpart. So more research needs to be done to find the best way to domesticate this wild plants.

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