Ethnoveterinary Medicines: A Potential Alternative to Animal Health Care for the Tribal Communities of Koraput, Odisha

Abstract

Medicinal plants play an important role throughout the world for the treatment and prevention of various diseases of both human and animal. The tribal communities of Koraput still depends on medicinal plants for their first aid remedies to treat some simple ailments of livestock. The present study was initiated to quantitatively document their indigenous knowledge on the utilization of most common medicinal plants for livestock treatment. A total of 40 field surveys were carried out from August 2015 to October 2016 in order to document the utilization of medicinal plants. The ethnoveterinary information was collected through structure interviews among the traditional healers and local livestock farmers . The collected data were analyzed through use value (UV), informant consensus factor (Fic) and fidelity level (FL). A total of 56 species of plants distributed in 54 genera belonging to 36 families were identified as commonly used medicinal plants by the tribal communities of Koraput for the treatment of 20 types of ailments. These ailments were categorized into 9 ailment categories based on the body systems treated. Leaves were the most frequently used plant parts and most of the medicines were prepared in the form of paste and administered orally. Fic values of the present study indicated that there was a high agreement in the use of plants in the treatment of wound infections, dysentery and eye problems among the users. Dermatological infections/diseases and gastro-intestinal disorders had highest use-reports and 2 species of plants had the highest fidelity level of 100%. The most important species according to their use value were Curcuma longa , Ficusreligiosa , Aloe vera, Ziziphusmauritiana, Tridaxprocumbens and Vitexnegundo. As a result of the present study it can be recommend the plants Aloe vera,Azadirachtaindica, Calotropisprocera, Curcuma longa, Daturametel, Ficusreligiosa, Ziziphusmauritiana, Vitexnegundo and Tridaxprocumbens can be investigated further for their ethnopharmacological properties for the discovery of potential new drugs for veterinary treatment.