In order to obtain certain material we can produce certain plants( which contain that material) or can search different kinds of sources in various plants. In your opinion which way is more practical and technical?
It depends on the type of drug you are trying to produce. I would think the best is to follow both methods and double your chances of success.
Before hand run feasibility studies and analyze cost and complexity for both and take into account the expected yield in those plants and compare with the overall yield from those different kind of sources.
In case the yield of both routes is similar, I assume that producing that specific plants route will turn out to be most efficient since then you might have to cope less impurities and given type of side product elimination process while with several types of plants complexity rises and different process might be needed
sometimes we can't cultivate ideal plants in our region because of salinity, pests, etc. for example damask rose is more tolerant to salinity than other sources of geraniol, geranial etc, such as common balm.
@ Saeid,
If you cannot cultivate ideal plants in your region, can you cultivate them in a controlled environment, such as greenhouses? Tissue culture for mass production is an alternative, especially grow those for extracting expensive extracts. What do you think?
in our country the majority of farmers are old and these new methods can not be used widely.
Look like this is a general trend for many countries-- fewer young people want to step into farming. Attached reports are from the US (attachments #1 & #2). In recent Indian census, it found out that the percentage of farmers to the population has been coming down steadily. It has declined from nearly 50% in 1951 to 24% in 2011. I am a little worried about how to get our food supplies in the future. We should encourage more people involve in agriculture.
Medicinal plants: In traditional and folklore/tribal medicine systems plant parts or whole plants are used for making medicines. Even today most of the medicinal plants are collected from the wild.
In modern medicines, material or active substance isolated from the medicinal plants are used. The problem is variation in the active component from area to area, season to season, plant to plant etc. Sustainable supplies in sufficient quantity is necessary. For this reason wherever possible semi-synthetic or synthetic substitutes are used. Wild sources continue to dominate over cultivated sources.
Aromatic plants: Both cultivated and wild sources are used to produce essential oils, gums, resins, resinoids, concretes, absolutes, pomades, oleoresins etc.
It is common knowledge that different countries are rich in different plant species (endemic to that country) and are suitable to grow exotic species acclimatized to that country. Technologies exist to cultivate several species based on the agro-climatic conditions of a country. For examples in India several types of climatic conditions and soils exist making it possible to grow a wide variety of indigenous and introduced medicinal and aromatic crops. The choice depends on the country.
Preferences are dictated by cost:benefit ratios in relation to existing indigenous or imported medicines. If some plants can not be grown it is better to procure the material/plants from international markets (out-sourcing is done by multinational companies).
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