TITLE:
Commiphora wightii (Arnott) Bhandari—A Natural Source of Guggulsterone: Facing a High Risk of Extinction in Its Natural Habitat
AUTHORS:
Neeraj Jain, Rajani S. Nadgauda
KEYWORDS:
IUCN; Conservation; Commiphora wightii; Somatic Embryogenesis; Threatened
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.4 No.6A,
June
19,
2013
ABSTRACT: The plants are
the primary producers and an indispensible source of food and nutrition,
medicine and fuel/biofuel. Unsustainable overharvesting and indiscriminate
felling of plants due to ever increasing needs of population pressure are
causes of
great concern. The IUCN includes, the species facing a high risk of extinction
in the wild as threatened, and “endangered” is one of the sub-categories under
“threatened” category. Commiphora wightii (Arnott) Bhandari is an arid region plant, highly valued for its medicinally
important guggul gum-resin as a source of guggulsterone. It is listed in IUCN’s
Red Data List of threatened plants and now it is becoming endangered. Its
population is fast depleting in its natural habitat, primarily due to
over-exploitation, unsustainable and destructive methods of gum-extraction coupled
with natural dry-arid habitat, slow growth and poor regeneration of
the plant. Several other reasons have also been indicated for its declining
population. Therefore, it demands severe measures for its conservation before
we completely lose this important medicinal plant. A lot of research and study
is underway but has vast scope for improvement, requiring efforts to
supplement with such information that would aid transgenic development and
breeding programmes for production and cultivation of improved varieties. The
article presents the importance of this plant and its conservation in a
nut-shell.