Exploration, Conservation, and Utilization of Ethnobotanical Knowledge: Sri Lankan Perspective

Though Sri Lanka is one of the centers of biodiversity with untapped genetic resource and traditional knowledge, currently the country’s biodiversity and indigenous knowledge are at risk and are reaming as underutilized and neglected treasures. In the present context, such unique diversity and associated indigenous knowledge are highly vulnerable to changing of physical environment, increasing population pressure, and rapid development of socioeconomic status. Presently the traditional community maintains their knowledge on close relationship with plants from generation to generation as personnel memories. In this context ethnobotanical studies play a pivotal role in collecting, documenting, and conserving such knowledge before disappearing from old generations of local communities. At present the country does not have an appropriate and systematic mechanism to extract and preserve the traditional knowledge of indigenous community. We believe that government bodies, such as departments, universities, museums, herbaria, botanical gardens, and libraries, should have a leading role and keen interest to identify, collect, preserve, and disseminate indigenous knowledge for the benefit of the local and global community, because the traditional knowledge systems and the modern scientific knowledge together can make a powerful tool to achieve the country’s development and conservation goals.