Environmental Pollution And Medicinal Plants

Environmental Pollution and Medicinal Plants presents information on the impact of environmental pollution on the performance of medicinal plants at various levels including damage detection, adaptation, tolerance, and physiological and molecular responses. This title draws attention not only to seeking new bioactive compounds for herbal drug preparation, but also on ensuring high standards of quality through evaluation of the chemical purity of medicinal plants growing under polluted conditions. It discusses the latest trends and responses of medicinal plants, indicating their tolerance and adaptation to environmental pollution. This book also focuses on secondary metabolites, phytochemicals, and bioactive compounds associated with medicinal plants growing in contaminated conditions. This book will be indispensable for students and professionals working in the field of environmental pollution, medicinal plants, and herbal medicine, as well as for plant biologists, economic botanists, molecular biologists, and biotechnologists. . KEY FEATURES Explains the global trend of environmental pollution and its impact on medicinal herbs with the help of clear text and attractive illustrations. Provides a comprehensive overview of medicinal plants and their interaction with environmental pollution in terms of damage detection, repair, acclimation, tolerance, adaptation, and physiological responses. Discusses the production of secondary metabolites, phytochemicals, and bioactive compounds (used for herbal drug preparation) in medicinal plants growing in the vicinity of contamination and pollution load. Highlights opportunities and future challenges in "omics" studies on medicinal plants.

Environmental Pollution and Medicinal Plants presents information on the impact of environmental pollution on the performance of medicinal plants at various levels including damage detection, adaptation, tolerance, and physiological and molecular responses. This title draws attention not only to seeking new bioactive compounds for herbal drug preparation, but also on ensuring high standards of quality through evaluation of the chemical purity of medicinal plants growing under polluted conditions. It discusses the latest trends and responses of medicinal plants, indicating their tolerance and adaptation to environmental pollution. This book also focuses on secondary metabolites, phytochemicals, and bioactive compounds associated with medicinal plants growing in contaminated conditions. This book will be indispensable for students and professionals working in the field of environmental pollution, medicinal plants, and herbal medicine, as well as for plant biologists, economic botanists, molecular biologists, and biotechnologists. . KEY FEATURES Explains the global trend of environmental pollution and its impact on medicinal herbs with the help of clear text and attractive illustrations. Provides a comprehensive overview of medicinal plants and their interaction with environmental pollution in terms of damage detection, repair, acclimation, tolerance, adaptation, and physiological responses. Discusses the production of secondary metabolites, phytochemicals, and bioactive compounds (used for herbal drug preparation) in medicinal plants growing in the vicinity of contamination and pollution load. Highlights opportunities and future challenges in "omics" studies on medicinal plants.

This book sheds new light on the role of various environmental factors in regulating the metabolic adaptation of medicinal and aromatic plants. Many of the chapters present cutting-edge findings on the contamination of medicinal plants through horizontal transfer, as well as nanomaterials and the biosynthesis of pharmacologically active compounds. In addition, the book highlights the impacts of environmental factors (e.g., high and low temperature, climate change, global warming, UV irradiation, intense sunlight and shade, ozone, carbon dioxide, drought, salinity, nutrient deficiency, agrochemicals, waste, heavy metals, nanomaterials, weeds, pests and pathogen infections) on medicinal and aromatic plants, emphasizing secondary metabolisms. In recent years, interest has grown in the use of bioactive compounds from natural sources. Medicinal and aromatic plants constitute an important part of the natural environment and agro-ecosystems, and contain a wealth of chemical compounds known as secondary metabolites and including alkaloids, glycosides, essential oils and other miscellaneous active substances. These metabolites help plants cope with environmental and/or external stimuli in a rapid, reversible and ecologically meaningful manner. Additionally, environmental factors play a crucial role in regulating the metabolic yield of these biologically active molecules. Understanding how medicinal plants respond to environmental perturbations and climate change could open new frontiers in plant production and in agriculture, where successive innovation is urgently needed due to the looming challenges in connection with global food security and climate change. Readers will discover a range of revealing perspectives and the latest research on this vital topic.

Medicinal plants supply the ever-growing needs of humankind for natural chemicals, such as pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, agrochemicals, and chemical additives. These plants contain bioactive secondary metabolites, which possess antimalarial, anthelminthic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antimicrobial, antiarthritic, antioxidant, antidiabetic, antihypertensive, anticancer, antifungal, antispasmodic, cardioprotective, antithyroid, and antihistaminic properties. Secondary metabolites play a major role in the adaptation of plants to the changing environment and stress condition as they are affected by both biotic and abiotic stress. Humans rely on medicinal plants for various needs since ancient time, and their population still seems enough for fulfilling our demands. However, in the foreseeable future, we will be forced to think about the accessibility of resources for future generations. For these reasons, we must look for alternative sustainable options of resources which can protect these immensely important medicinal plants from various stresses induced by challenging environment. Evolving eco-friendly methodologies and mechanisms to improve these plants’ responses to unfavorable environmental circumstances is important in creating significant tools for better understanding of plant adaptations to various abiotic stresses and sustaining the supply of pharmaceuticals as global climate change intensifies. One of the great challenges in the near future will be the sustainable production of medicinal plants under increasing adverse effects of climate change. A combination of adverse demographic factors and climatological perturbations is expected to impact food and pharmaceutical production globally. Despite the induction of several tolerance mechanisms, medicinal plants often fail to survive under environmental extremes. To ensure their sustainable production under adverse conditions, multidisciplinary approaches are needed, and useful leads are likely to emerge. However, improving plants' performance under restrictive growth conditions requires a deep understanding of the molecular processes that underlie their extraordinary physiological plasticity. This edited volume emphasizes the recent updates about the current research on medicinal plants covering different aspects related to challenges and opportunities in the concerned field. This book is an attempt to bring together global researchers who have been engaged in the area of stress signaling, crosstalk, and mechanisms of medicinal plants. The book will provide a direction towards implementation of programs and practices that will enable sustainable production of medicinal plants resilient to challenging environmental conditions. Moreover, this book will instigate and commence readers to state-of-the-art developments and trends in this field.

Ever-changing environmental conditions and climatic transformations have affected each component of the environment. Increasing rates of soil, air and water pollution have altered the growth and production of vegetation to a greater extent and medicinal plants are also not spared from this. Medicinal plants form an important part of traditional and modern systems of medicine. The consumption of medicinal plants has increased over the last few decades. The present book provides detailed information on the topic with an emphasis on the effects of inorganic, organic (chemical), biological and other contaminants of medicinal plants. It provides a vast amount of information concerning the effects of various environmental factors on growth, productivity and secondary metabolite production in medicinal plants. The book also highlights the adverse effects of contaminants in plants and related toxicity of contaminated medicinal plants, with their possible effects on therapeutic efficiency and human health. The detailed information about the contamination and toxicity in medicinal plants will challenge the scientific community to find ways of countering many environmental adversities to protect, preserve and maintain many of the rare, highly valuable medicinal plants used in treating various diseases.

Environmental Contaminants and Medicinal Plants Action on Female Reproduction discusses the problem of environmental pollution, medicinal and food plants, and their impact on reproduction. The book describes the mechanisms of environmental contaminants' action, outlines the key causes of their harmful impact on reproduction, and explores what regulatory substances and processes should be targeted due to the negative effect of pollutants on reproduction. Furthermore, it describes the provenance, properties, physiological and therapeutic effects, and possible areas of application of the known medicinal and functional food plants and their constituents with a focus on female reproductive processes. This book will be a useful resource for reproductive biologists, specialists in assisted reproduction, animal production and phytotherapy, toxicologists, pharmacologists, pharmaceutical scientists, endocrinologists, medicinal and natural product chemists, nutritionists and others engaged in the study of environmental contaminants and medicinal and functional food plants. Discusses common environmental contaminants that affect female reproductive processes and the mechanisms of their effects Covers plants and their active substances as potential protectives to environmental contaminants Examines how medicinal plants affect female reproductive processes, the mechanisms of their effects, and what plant molecules are responsible for the positive effects

Environmental pollution as a consequence of diverse human activities has become a global concern. Urbanization, mining, industrial revolution, burning of fossil fuels/firewood and poor agricultural practices, in addition to improper dumping of waste products, are largely responsible for the undesirable change in the environment composition. Environmental pollution is mainly classified as air pollution, water pollution, land pollution, noise pollution, thermal pollution, light pollution, and plastic pollution. Nowadays, it has been realized that with the increasing environmental pollution, impurities may accumulate in plants, which are required for basic human uses such as for food, clothing, medicine, and so on. Environmental pollution has tremendous impacts on phenological events, structural patterns, physiological phenomena, biochemical status, and the cellular and molecular features of plants. Exposure to environmental pollution induces acute or chronic injury depending on the pollutant concentration, exposure duration, season and plant species. Moreover, the global rise of greenhouse gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, methane, chlorofluorocarbons and ozone in the atmosphere is among the major threats to the biodiversity. They have also shown visible impacts on life cycles and distribution of various plant species. Anthropogenic activities, including the fossil-fuel combustion in particular, are responsible for steady increases in the atmospheric greenhouse gases concentrations. This phenomenon accelerates the global heating. Studies have suggested that the changes in carbon dioxide concentrations, rainfall and temperature have greatly influenced the plant physiological and metabolic activities including the formation of biologically active ingredients. Taken together, plants interact with pollutants, and cause adverse ecological and economic outcomes. Therefore, plant response to pollutants requires more investigation in terms of damage detection, adaptation, tolerance, and the physiological and molecular responses. The complex interplay among other emerging pollutants, namely, radioisotopes, cell-phone radiation, nanoparticles, nanocomposites, heavy metals etc. and their impact on plant adaptation strategies, and possibility to recover, mitigation, phytoremediation, etc., also needs to be explored. Further, it is necessary to elucidate better the process of the pollutant’s uptake by plant and accumulation in the food chain, and the plant resistance capability against the various kinds of environmental pollutants. In this context, the identification of tolerance mechanisms in plants against pollutants can help in developing eco-friendly technologies, which requires molecular approaches to increase plant tolerance to pollutants, such as plant transformation and genetic modifications. Pollutant-induced overproduction of reactive oxygen species that cause DNA damage and apoptosis-related alterations, has also been examined. They also trigger changes at the levels of transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome, which has been discussed in this book.

Environmental Contaminants and Medicinal Plants Action on Female Reproduction discusses the problem of environmental pollution, medicinal and food plants, and their impact on reproduction. The book describes the mechanisms of environmental contaminants' action, outlines the key causes of their harmful impact on reproduction, and explores what regulatory substances and processes should be targeted due to the negative effect of pollutants on reproduction. Furthermore, it describes the provenance, properties, physiological and therapeutic effects, and possible areas of application of the known medicinal and functional food plants and their constituents with a focus on female reproductive processes. This book will be a useful resource for reproductive biologists, specialists in assisted reproduction, animal production and phytotherapy, toxicologists, pharmacologists, pharmaceutical scientists, endocrinologists, medicinal and natural product chemists, nutritionists and others engaged in the study of environmental contaminants and medicinal and functional food plants. Discusses common environmental contaminants that affect female reproductive processes and the mechanisms of their effects Covers plants and their active substances as potential protectives to environmental contaminants Examines how medicinal plants affect female reproductive processes, the mechanisms of their effects, and what plant molecules are responsible for the positive effects