Etnobotanical Studies on Solanum species from Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve of Western Ghats, Tamil Nadu, India

Ethnobotany leads to drug discovery and its deals with the study of inter relationships between human and plants. However, several medicinal plants possess their own therapeutic properties and every ethnic group of tribal’s having some unique knowledge about local medicinal plants. Owing to documenting the indigenous knowledge through ethno medicinal studies is important for the conservation and utilization of biological resource using questionnaires. In general, egg plants have been used an important vegetable, valuable household crop, ideal traditional ethno medicines, suitable alternative, clinically useful therapeutic compounds, low cost production, high quality, much safer and biologically active. The present investigation were find out, about 1/3 population of Nilgiri biosphere reserve forest area depends on traditional ethno medicine and some reliable source of drugs were obtained from genera of Solanum under the family Solanaceae. Ethnobotanical data were collected from traditional practitioners of study area using questionnaires. A total of 5 Solanum species were recorded for medicinal and household maintenance applications. The most reported uses were for gastrointestinal problems, Cough medicine, pulmonary aliment, and Toothache remedy. The commonly used plant parts were leaves and fruits and they were commonly administered as a paste, decoction, infusion, juice and poultice or taken orally without preparation. There was strong agreement among the informants as to the usages of the plants (informant consensus factor 0.80–0.92). The significance value of 5 for Solanum americanum Mill., Solanum torvum Sw., Solanum virginianum L., Solanum trilobatum L., and Solanum incanum L. indicated are the most important species and also adequate utilizations of Nilgiri tribals. Five plants had a fidelity level of 100%