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MAIN ACTORS/PARTNERS INVOLVED:
1.
Regional Research Laboratory (RRL) Jammu Tawi (India)
It
is one of the 40 laboratories functioning under the umbrella of
the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), the
premier autonomous R & D organization established by Govt.
of India. RRL, Jammu was established in 1957. The mandate of the
institute includes survey, inventory and documentation of plant
genetic resources of the country, documentation of the ethnobiological
information, introduction, domestication & genetic enhancement
cultivation of Medicinal & Aromatic Plants; post harvest technology
& development of value added natural products with special
focus on drugs and pharmaceuticals; standardization, quality control
and formulation of Traditional Medicine/Herbal Drugs. Pushpangadan
was a scientist as this institute from 1969-1990 and he was instrumental
in establishing the first ethnopharmacological laboratory in India
in 1985 at RRL, Jammu.
2.
Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI), Trivandrum
(India)
Established
by the Government of Kerala in 1979, TBGRI is an autonomous body
registered under the Societies Registration Act.
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In
March 1997, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government
of India, accorded it the status of grant-in-aid Centre
of Excellence in Conservation and Sustainable Utilization
of Tropical Plant Diversity. The Garden System and the R
& D system are the two functional wings of TBGRI.
The
R & D activities of TBGRI are geared to achieve such
tangible goals as conservation and sustainable utilization
of the region's plant genetic resources with the intervention
of science & technology. The activities are thus integrated
and multidisciplinary in nature, involving such pertinent
components as survey, exploration, collection, introduction,
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(cytological, phytochemical, genetical, pharmacological
and biotechnological), documentation, conservation and economic
evaluation of India's tropical plant diversity.
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TBGRI's
highly coordinated multidisciplinary research system comprises
the following divisions: Plant Systematics and Evolutionary Science,
Plant Biotechnology, Microbiology, Conservation Biology, Ethnopharmacology
and Ethnomedicine, Phytochemistry, Ecological Economics and Environmental
Planning, Information Technology and Eco-education.
3.
Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF), Government of India
Since
1983, MoEF, Govt. of India has been operating multidisciplinary,
multi-institutional project namely "All India Coordinated
Research Project on Ethnobiology (AICRPE)" under the Man
& The Biosphere programme. This project was initially launched
under the Department of Science & Technology (DST) but later
transferred to MoEF, Govt. of India. Pushpangadan was the PI and
Chief Coordinator of this ambitious programme which was operated
at 27 centres in India and lasted for 16 years (1982-1998). AICRPE
documented the uses of over 10,000 wild plants for meeting a variety
of day-to-day requirements. This project has facilitated in developing
the benefit sharing experiment by the way of providing administrative
and financial support through AICRPE.
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