Museum for Ethnomedicinal plants
This wealth of medicinal plants as well as their information resources is diminishing day by day due to overexploitation and lack of interest in herbal medicine. Complete information on medicinal plants of the Western Ghats is not available in one place. The establishment of a museum dedicated to the medicinal plant wealth of Western Ghats is a step towards fulfilling this lacuna.
More than 710 photographs of 265 species of medicinal plants were collected during the process, of which 113 laminated color photographs are displayed in the museum. A total of 684 herbaria of 356 species were prepared. Illustrative scientific charts of various branches of traditional medicine like Ayurveda and Siddha (Indian systems of medicine), modern medicine, pharmacology, etc. are displayed.
A total of 460 crude drug samples are collected so far, of which 285 are dry preserved specimens and 175 are wet preserved specimen samples. Most of the collected information is stored in digital format. The photographs of the plants were stored electronically to develop Digital Image Library of the medicinal plants. All the herbaria are scanned and stored in the computer system, which is serving as Digital Herbaria. The museum has two multimedia kiosks providing touch screen information to visitors on medicinal plants of Western Ghats. Training programs and workshops are routinely conducted as a part of IEC activity. The people from various backgrounds and professions are regularly visiting the museum. The museum is serving as the IEC center for medicinal plants and traditional medicine system in North West Karnataka.