USE AND MANAGEMENT OF MEDICINAL PLANTS BY THE PEOPLE OF JABITEHNAN WOREDA, WEST GOJJAM, AMHARA

Around 80% of Ethiopians are thought to rely on medicinal herbs to heal human and livestock illnesses. The goal of this project was to collect, identify, and document ethno-medicinal plants as well as associated indigenous knowledge from the study area's people. Semistructured interviews, focus group discussions, and direct field observation were used to obtain ethno-medicinal data. Descriptive statistics like percentage and frequency were used to analyse the data. Also calculated were the informant consensus factor, fidelity level and preference ranking, independent sample t-test, ANOVA, and Jaccard's similarity index. The results show that a total of 82 medicinal plant species from 46 families and 76 genera were collected and documented as traditional medicine for the treatment of 63 diseases in humans and livestock in the study area; of the 82 medicinal plant species, 63 plant species (76.83 percent) were used as human remedies, 10 plant species (12.20 percent) for livestock, and 9 plant species (9.20 percent) for both humans and livestock. The Asteraceae family had the greatest number of species. Herbs were the most common type of growth, followed by shrubs and trees. The most commonly used plant parts were discovered to be leaves, followed by roots and seeds. Crushing was a prominent method of preparation 27. (30.00 percent ). Oral administration was the most common method of administering medicines, with 106 (65.86 percent ). The area's communities have more or less similar indigenous knowledge, according to an analysis of the similarity index between the three kebeles assessed. Gender, age, and educational level were found to influence medicinal plant knowledge. Agricultural growth and overharvesting were the greatest threats to medicinal plants. Locals should be educated on medicinal plant conservation in order to preserve a significant amount of traditional medicinal plants and knowledge.

Please see the link :- https://www.ikprress.org/index.php/AJAAS/article/view/6764