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Plant resources of south-east asia 12 : (1) medicinal and poisonous plants 1
Prosea, short for 'Plant Resources of South-East Asia', is an international programme focused on South-East Asia. Its purpose is to make available the wealth of dispersed knowledge on plant resources for education, extension, research and industry through a computerized data bank and an illustrated multivolume handbook. A thorough knowledge of plant resources is essential for human life and plays a key role in ecologically balanced land-use systems. Extensive information on the plants growing in the region is needed to enable the plant resources of each country to be used optimally. A large international team of experts is preparing the texts on particular species or genera, which are being published in commodity groups. All taxa are treated in a similar manner with details on uses, botany, ecology, agronomy or silviculture, genetic resources, breeding, prospects and literature.
This first of the three planned volumes on the medicinal and poisonous plants of South-East Asia deals with the better-known species and genera. Many people in this region depend on plants for their primary health care and as pesticides. Interest in medicinal and poisonous plants is increasing because it is recognized that plants are still a vast source of novel chemical compounds, that traditional systems of medicine are good starting points for drug development, that synthetic drugs often produce serious side-effects, and that pesticides of plant origin are usually environmentally benign. This volume gives up-to-date information on all aspects of the plants, and, where possible, couples traditional uses with recent scientific findings. The volume covers about 330 species, including aloe, coca, derris, garlic, hemp, Java tea, Madagascar periwinkle, poppy, quinine, snakewood, turmeric, wormseed and wormwood. The introduction deals with general aspects of medicinal and poisonous plants. A glossary and several indices are included.
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