title: Ethnobotany of medicinal plants in the Thar Desert (Sindh) of Pakistan.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The traditional use of medicinal plants in health-care practices among the rural communities provides the basis for natural drug discovery development. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first quantitative ethnobotanical investigation on the use of medicinal plants in the Thar Desert (Sindh) of Pakistan.
  
  
  METHODS
  In total, 530 local informants and traditional healers were interviewed, using semistructured interviews. Various quantitative indices such as relative frequency of citation (RFC), use value (UV), informant consensus factor (ICF), fidelity level (FL), relative importance (RI), and the Jaccard Index (JI) were applied to the documented data.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The traditional medical uses of 87 plant species belonging to 32 families were reported on. Amaranthaceae was the most-frequently cited (nine species), followed by Cucurbitaceae and Euphorbiaceae (six species each). The most dominant life form was herbs (73.56%). The most-used plant parts were leaves, with 65 reports (28.88%), followed by seeds (16%). The common mode of preparation reported was powder (25.75%), with 74% herbal medicines obtained from fresh plant materials.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The ethnobotanical result documented in this study provides practical evidence about the use of medicinal plants among the inhabitants of the Thar Desert. Further, the findings revealed that the medicinal plants of the area are a major source of herbal drugs for primary health care used among the rural communities. This survey can be used as baseline information for further scientific investigation to develop new plant-based commercial drugs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Quaid- I- Azam University, Islamabad, 45320, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Ghulam
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yaseen
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Quaid- I- Azam University, Islamabad, 45320, Pakistan. Electronic address: mushtaqflora@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Mushtaq
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ahmad
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Quaid- I- Azam University, Islamabad, 45320, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Shazia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sultana
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences and Chemistry, University of Nizwa, Birkat Al- Mouz Nizwa, Sultanate Oman.
authors.forename: Ahmed
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Suleiman Alharrasi
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences and Chemistry, University of Nizwa, Birkat Al- Mouz Nizwa, Sultanate Oman.
authors.forename: Javid
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hussain
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Quaid- I- Azam University, Islamabad, 45320, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Muhammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zafar
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Science and Technology Kohat, Pakistan.
authors.lastname: Shafiq-Ur-Rehman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003889:Desert Climate; D019448:Ethnobotany; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010154:Pakistan; D008517:Phytotherapy; D010946:Plants, Medicinal; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Ethnobotany; Medicinal plants; Pakistan; Quantitative analyses; Thar Desert