The Phyto-Pharma Plant Mission has prioritized around eight to ten plants of the northeastern region for production of phyto pharma products.
This is in a bid to promote cultivation of medicinal plants in the eight states of the region and linking it with the phyto-pharmaceutical industry.
The Department of Biotechnology, the nodal coordinating and implementing department for the mission has sanctioned Rs 50 crore for its successful implementation, reports The Assam Tribune.
Renu Swarup , the Secretary of the Department of Biotechnology said that the department had hold several meetings with stakeholders and the actual number of medicinal plants will be firmed up once they get the requirement from the industry.
Swarup also said that once the exact number of plants have been identified, forward and backward linkages will be created and connected to the farmers so that they can produce sufficient quantity of the material.
Common extraction facilities of the plants will also set up so that the industries can easily pick up the extracts from there.
The secretary added that the institutes which would be the part of the mission have been identified.
Swarup hoped that in the next one year, the implementation of the mission will be carried out without any hassles.
The Phyto-Pharma Plant Mission aims at conservation and cultivation of endangered and threatened endemic medicinal plants of northeast India and discovery of new botanical drugs for unmet medical needs using the rich traditional ethno-botanical knowledge and biodiversity of these states.
This mission would also help to improve the availability of authentic and quality botanical raw material on sustainable basis for a boom in the phyto-pharmaceutical industry.