Conservation and Development: The Role of India’s Medicinal Plants Board

India is home to one of the world’s richest repositories of medicinal plants – a living heritage that underpins traditional healthcare systems practiced by hundreds of millions of people. Yet this wealth is under pressure. Wild populations are shrinking, demand is rising, and the communities that depend on these plants most are caught in the middle. This is precisely the problem that the National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB) was created to address – balancing conservation with development, and ecology with livelihoods.

Importance of medicinal plants in India 🔗

India’s plant diversity is extraordinary. The country covers just 2.4% of the world’s land area yet harbors around 8% of global biodiversity, making it one of 12 recognized mega-diversity nations. Of the 17,000-18,000 flowering plant species found across the country, more than 7,000 have documented medicinal uses. Four of the world’s 35 global biodiversity hotspots – the Himalayas, Indo-Burma, Sundaland, and the Western Ghats – fall within India’s territory, and each is a major reservoir of medicinal species.

These plants are not merely of scientific interest. They are the foundation of India’s traditional medical systems – Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani, Homeopathy, and various folk traditions – which collectively serve a vast portion of the population. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around 80% of the world’s population relies on traditional medicine for primary healthcare, and plant-based remedies are at the core of this. In India specifically, the herbal medicine and Ayurveda market is projected to grow at a 15% compound annual growth rate from 2021 to 2026, signaling both the scale of demand and the urgency of sustainable supply.

Beyond health, medicinal plants are an economic lifeline. According to IUCN, the collection and processing of medicinal plants generates at least 35 million workdays per year for the poor and under-employed in India. For tribal and forest-margin communities, these plants represent a primary source of household income – one that is now under serious threat.

Establishment and mandate of the NMPB 🔗

The National Medicinal Plants Board was established by the Government of India on November 24, 2000. It functions under the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy) and serves as the nodal agency for coordinating all policy, programme, and regulatory matters related to medicinal plants in India. Its core mandate is to develop mechanisms for inter-ministerial coordination and to drive the overall growth of the medicinal plants sector – spanning conservation, cultivation, trade, and export.

The Board operates through a network of 37 State Medicinal Plants Boards (SMPBs) and 6 Regional Cum Facilitation Centers spread across the country. This federated structure enables policies crafted at the national level to reach implementation at the state and district levels. The NMPB also coordinates with international bodies on issues like the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing, and CITES-listed species trade.

Programmes and initiatives of the NMPB 🔗

The flagship framework through which NMPB delivers its mandate is the Central Sector Scheme on Conservation, Development and Sustainable Management of Medicinal Plants. The scheme received an outlay of ₹322.41 crores for the five-year period from 2021-22 to 2025-26, continuing decades of sustained investment in the sector. The scheme operates across several interlocking components.

In-situ conservation 🔗

In-situ conservation means protecting medicinal plants within their natural habitats. Under this approach, forest departments and state agencies designate conservation zones in forest divisions where medicinal plant-rich areas are protected from harvesting and human disturbance. This preserves not just individual species but the entire ecological context that sustains their growth – soil composition, associated organisms, and microclimate. The NMPB works with state forest departments to identify and formally protect such zones, especially for rare, endangered, and threatened (RET) species.

Ex-situ conservation and herbal gardens 🔗

Ex-situ conservation involves maintaining plant populations outside their natural habitats – in controlled, protected settings. One of the most visible NMPB initiatives in this space is the development of Herbal Medicinal Plants Gardens (HMPGs) in schools, colleges, universities, and government offices. Projects were established across 13 states, where a reported 167 tree species, 137 shrubs, 48 climbers, and 197 herbs have been raised and maintained. These gardens serve a dual purpose: they preserve genetic diversity and they raise awareness among the general public – especially younger generations – about the value and uses of medicinal plants.

Research, development, and quality planting material 🔗

The NMPB funds research into agro-techniques for prioritized medicinal species and supports the development of quality planting material (QPM). It has prioritized 32 medicinal plant species for focused research and development, targeting those that are in short supply, commercially important, or ecologically vulnerable. The Board also develops Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and Good Field Collection Practices (GFCPs) – standardized protocols designed to improve the quality and consistency of raw material harvested or cultivated across different regions.

Market linkage and supply chain development 🔗

A persistent challenge in the sector has been the weak market position of farmers and collectors, who often sell raw material at low prices to intermediaries. NMPB addresses this through its Integrated Component on Forward and Backward Linkage in the Supply Chain of Medicinal Plants. This includes generating market price data, building post-harvest management (PHM) infrastructure, supporting value addition at source, and integrating growers with platforms like e-Charak for digital market access. The goal is to capture more value at the primary producer level – reducing losses and increasing income for the people who actually grow and collect these plants.

Capacity building, education, and outreach 🔗

The NMPB runs training programmes for farmers, collectors, and other stakeholders on cultivation, harvesting, storage, and quality control. It also supports fellowships and research programmes at universities for postgraduate and doctoral students working on medicinal plant topics. Outreach activities include participation in national and international trade fairs, development of educational materials, and integration with agricultural extension systems such as Kisan Call Centres and Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs).

Supporting rural economies 🔗

One of the most important – and often underappreciated – dimensions of NMPB’s work is its role in rural livelihood generation. The Board explicitly frames medicinal plant cultivation as both a conservation strategy and an economic development tool. By encouraging farmers to cultivate high-demand species rather than relying entirely on wild collection, NMPB helps reduce pressure on natural populations while creating stable income opportunities.

Field studies have shown that this approach works. A participatory cultivation programme in Uttarakhand’s Champawat district found that after structured training and exposure visits, 132 farmers adopted MAP (medicinal and aromatic plant) cultivation across 14 hectares of land. Memoranda of understanding were signed between farmers and traders to ensure buy-back arrangements – a model that reduces market risk for smallholders. In Himachal Pradesh, medicinal and aromatic plants contribute roughly 8% of the state’s GDP and generate approximately 45,000 employment opportunities.

From April 2001 to March 2006, the NMPB sanctioned 4,254 projects under its promotional and contractual farming schemes – a reflection of the scale at which it has tried to embed cultivation into the rural economic fabric. The Board also supports the establishment of Primary Producer Companies (PPCs) to strengthen collective bargaining and market access for small and marginal farmers.

Challenges in conservation and sustainable use 🔗

Despite these efforts, the medicinal plants sector faces deep structural challenges that the NMPB alone cannot fully resolve.

Over-exploitation of wild populations 🔗

The most pressing threat is unsustainable harvesting from the wild. Estimates suggest that around 95% of the medicinal plants used by India’s herbal industry are still sourced from wild populations, and over 45% of all medicinal and aromatic plant species are harvested directly from natural habitats. The wild populations of roughly 100 traded species have already shown measurable decline. Research has consistently shown that over-exploitation not only depletes populations but erodes genetic diversity – reducing the long-term resilience of these species and the ecosystems they inhabit.

Habitat loss and fragmentation 🔗

Deforestation, land conversion for agriculture, and expanding human settlements continue to reduce and fragment the habitats where medicinal plants grow. This is particularly acute in biodiversity hotspots like the Western Ghats and the Indian Himalayas, where endemic species face both collection pressure and shrinking habitat. Habitat fragmentation compounds the problem by isolating populations, reducing gene flow, and increasing extinction risk.

Weak quality control and adulteration 🔗

The quality of raw medicinal plant material is highly variable, and adulteration – substituting cheaper or inferior species for the intended plant – is common in the supply chain. This undermines both the safety and efficacy of traditional medicine formulations and damages the sector’s credibility, especially in export markets. NMPB has invested in Botanical Reference Standards and quality testing infrastructure, but enforcement remains inconsistent across states.

Inadequate documentation and knowledge erosion 🔗

A large portion of India’s medicinal plant knowledge is held by traditional practitioners and forest-dependent communities. This knowledge is not systematically documented, and without formal recognition or legal protection for customary practices, it is vulnerable to loss as younger generations move away from forest-based livelihoods. Biopiracy – the unauthorized appropriation of traditional knowledge by external parties – remains a concern, and NMPB’s database initiatives aim partly to create a public-domain record that prevents such patents from being granted.

Strategies for the way forward 🔗

Sustainable management of India’s medicinal plant wealth requires action on several fronts simultaneously. Promoting cultivation to reduce dependence on wild collection is central, but it must be accompanied by credible market linkages and price incentives that make cultivation economically attractive compared to wild harvesting. Community-based management – where forest-dependent communities have a formal stake in and responsibility for managing local plant resources – has shown promise in various pilot programmes. Stronger regulation of the trade, better integration with biodiversity laws such as the Biodiversity Act 2002, and systematic monitoring of wild populations are all essential components of a long-term conservation strategy.

The NMPB’s work represents an important institutional anchor in this effort. By combining conservation goals with livelihood objectives, it recognizes that sustainable use – not just protection – is the only realistic path forward in a country where millions of people depend on these plants every day.

What do you think? Given that over 95% of India’s herbal industry still relies on wild-collected plants, do you think economic incentives like buy-back schemes and guaranteed minimum prices are enough to shift farmers toward large-scale cultivation? And how should India balance the intellectual property rights of tribal communities who hold traditional medicinal knowledge against the interests of the pharmaceutical and Ayurveda industries that profit from it?

References

1. https://nmpb.nic.in/
2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8148398/
3. https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/2006-022.pdf
4. https://iucn.org/content/indias-wild-medicinal-plants-threatened-over-exploitation
5. https://ayush.gov.in/
6. https://www.afcindia.org.in/nmpb-artical.php
7. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2287884X15001053
8. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214786121000760
9. https://www.allresearchjournal.com/archives/2014/vol1issue1/PartG/11-9-5-505.pdf
10. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1562365/
11. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9340702/
12. https://www.india.gov.in/