I am doing researchs about eco-physiological aspects and also preliminary studies for domestication of drought tolerance native medicinal plants.
I've done research for domestication of medicinal plants
It seems a good choice to work in the arid lands on commercialisation of high value, low weight, drought-tolerant plants rather than common commodities (cereals).
Here in Namibia and neighbouring countries quite a number of native medical plants (and their oils), ranging from trees to herbs, are gathered, semi-domesticated or domesticated in the arid to semi-arid zones. And their products exported. If interested, I can provide some names to facilitate your literature search.
I am not aware of water-deficit management for any of these native, commercial, medicinal plants. Only of experiments with one of them (Synonyms: Devil's claw; Grapple; Teufelskralle) that could not successfully be cultivated, not even with supplementary irrigation in drought years.
in Iran we have some drought tolerant medicinal plants such as Althea spp., Rosa damscena, Zizypus spp., etc.
Stomata is an important plant structure that highly determine the water use efficiency (WUE) of the plant, also it has been proposed that in drought condition that induce stomatal closure in one hand it causes better WUE and on the other hand it increases the secondary metabolite in medicinal plants. To get more ideas you can read the following paper:
Selmar D and Kleinwächter M, Influencing the product quality by deliberately applying drought stress during the cultivation of medicinal plants. Industrial Crops and Products 42:558-566 (2013).
Use of drought resistant native medicinal plants ( specially lamiaceae family plants such as Salvia species ) with short growth period during spring and high WUE could be considered as an appropriate way to increase water productivity in arid and semi-arid regions.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Computer Communications (Networks)
- Simulators