President urges focus on herbal medicines

President A P J Abdul Kalam said big pharma houses should invest in technology to convert herbal extracts of medicinal and aromatic plants into commercial drugs.

"Big firms should cultivate these herbs and pharma companies must complete the link by converting the extracts into drugs," Kalam said at the Agri-Horticultural Society of India, which has a large collection of such plants.

The vast potential of aromatic and medicinal drugs was largely unexplored though India was among the top five biodiversity nations of the world.

"At Rashtrapati Bhavan, I have 32 varieties of rare plants, particularly geranium, which have tremendous export potential...We must see how these plants like sadabahar and sarvagandha, which also have only a four-month cropping time, can benefit the farmers," he said.

Kalam went around the society's herbal garden project which is being assisted by the National Medicinal Plant Board. He said setting up of companies to extract products from medicinal herbs and plants might take time, but it was high time major pharma houses made a beginning.