Determination of informants’ consensus and documentation of ethnoveterinary practices from Birbhum district of West Bengal, India

Abstract

<span style="font-size:9.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt" lang="EN-US">The present communication deals with the observations made on the medicinal plants used in ethnoveterinary practices by the rural people of Birbhum district of West Bengal. The economically backward village dwellers of the district still rely upon the herbal medicine mainly for curing the diseases and ailments of their domesticated animals. Information was gathered by interviewing different rural people with the help of semi-structured and open ended questioners. Before data collection Prior Informed Consent has been taken from the informants in oral as well written form to protect their intellectual property right. <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;mso-bidi-font-style:italic">Consensus methodology has been used as statistical tool to identify most potentially effective medicinal plant species. F_ic value ranges from 0.81 to 1, frequency of citation (%) ranges from 1.8 to 16.19. Altogether 40 plants were recorded which are used in preparations of 35 types of ethnoveterinary remedies for curing 22 types of diseases and ailments. These ethnomedicinal remedies are new as they have not been recorded in earlier literature. The data of this study have been presented in a tabular form providing the botanical name &amp; family with field number, local/tribal name of the plants, parts used, name of the diseases, mode of administration and doses. This information may further be exploited scientifically to standardize new ethnoveterinary medicine.

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