In perspective: Potential medicinal plant resources of Kashmir Himalayas, their domestication and cultivation for commercial exploitation

The rich biodiversity of India and its extensive use since millennia for overall healthcare system has found renewed interest due to recent advances in modern biology, pharmacology, chemistry and other cognate disciplines. The concept of traditional medicine integrated with modern medicine has given birth to 'Green Medicine'. It has been proven to be more efficacious with least side effects on human beings. In India large number of medicinal plants from the compendium of Ayurveda, Unani and Sidha systems are being regularly employed in treating various ailments and diseases. The Northern extreme of India, the Kashmir Himalayas harbour remarkably rich wealth of medicinally important herbs and a number of these provide bulk of raw materials to the Indian pharmaceutical industry. However, harvesting of these plants from their natural habitats has resulted in serious depletion of many such herbs. The collated information presented here reviews potential of medicinal plant resources in terms their biologically active constituents and significance in the treatment of various diseases and ailments. This paper also highlights the importance of captive cultivation as a viable alternative that guarantees constant supply of raw materials to pharmaceutical industry and livelihood to the people. Additionally, it also entails the imperativeness of conventional breeding methods that can lead to genetic amelioration of various agronomic and medicinal attributes of the plant species. Above all, understanding of the biosynthetic pathways in different groups of plants is an important aspect for enhanced secondary metabolite production through biotechnological interventions. Except for only few reports, a large number of medicinal species from Kashmir Himalayas are yet to be scrutinized for their genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomic facets for developing designer genotypes and chemotypes.