BIOPROSPECTING: EXPLORING OUR ONLY RENEWABLE NATURAL RESOURCE

Authors

  • R. Verpoorte

Abstract

Biodiversity is our only renewable natural resource. Long time ago our ancestors found all kinds of uses for plants, microorganisms, etc. But as we are so used to our daily life, most people do not realize that it is based on these natural resources. We all know that milk comes from a factory! But in fact we use plants and other organisms for the production of e.g. food, medicines, dyes, flavours, fragrances, agrochemicals, clothing, paper, as well as for construction, fuel and many other applications. Much of the economic activities in the world are based on this. So we should be very grateful with the heritage of our ancestors. Still there is a lot of this traditional knowledge that has not yet been really explored, e.g. there is an estimated number of medicinal plants of 40,000-70,000 species, most of which have never been studied in detail. Using this knowledge in combination with our powerful scientific tools there are many possibilities for developing novel products and concepts from biodiversity. Biodiversity as source for developing novel medicines will be discussed in some more detail.

Author Biography

R. Verpoorte

Department of Pharmacognosy, Section Metabolomics, Institute of Biology Leiden, PO Box 9502, 2300RA Leiden, The Netherlands,

Published

2009-04-20

How to Cite

Verpoorte, R. (2009). BIOPROSPECTING: EXPLORING OUR ONLY RENEWABLE NATURAL RESOURCE. African Journal of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicines, 6, 305. Retrieved from https://journals.athmsi.org/index.php/ajtcam/article/view/610

Issue

ABSTRACTS OF THE WORLD CONGRESS ON MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC PLANTS, CAPE TOWN NOVEMBER 2008

Section

Conference Abstracts

License

Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution CC.

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