ABSTRACT
The study was conducted to investigate and document medicinal plants and associated knowledge on the utilization, management, preparation, and way of administration of the medicinal plant resources in Ensaro district, north Shewa zone, Ethiopia. A total of 100 informants were sampled from four study sites, and questionnaire surveys, semistructured interviews, ranking, and transect walk techniques were employed for data collection in midland, lowland, and highland agroecology and natural forests, riverine forests, and farmlands. Vast sources of the traditional healing knowledge of plant species conveyed from one generation to the next by word of mouth were from a family. A total of 101 medicinal plant species were identified from the study site, which belong to 95 genera and 49 families. These medicinal plants are used to treat about 35 types of human ailments. Families Fabaceae and Poaceae were represented by the highest number of medicinal plant species, followed by the Asteraceae, Lamiaceae, and Euphorbiaceae species. Out of the total medicinal plants' species, 46.53% were herbs and 33.66% were shrubs. Most of them have medicinal properties in their leaf, root, seed, bark, stem, latex, sap seed, and fruits. Medicine from these plant parts is prepared in fresh, dried, and both fresh and dried states. The highest informant consensus was documented for the plant Ocimum lamiifolium used by 75% of informants for its medicinal value in treating fibril illness. Cucumis ficifolius and Eucalyptus globules are used by 41% and 39% of informants ranking second and third, respectively, for their medicinal value. This study revealed that indigenous knowledge of traditional medicine is still popular among local communities in the study area. The conservation strategy practiced by local people is not enough to tackle the erosion of plant species from their habitats. Thus, the conservation of these plants and the associated knowledge base is very essential.
ABSTRACT
Clonal propagation enables favourable crop genotypes to be rapidly selected and multiplied. However, the absence of sexual propagation can lead to low genetic diversity and accumulation of deleterious mutations, which may eventually render crops less resilient to pathogens or environmental change. To better understand this trade-off, we characterize the domestication and contemporary genetic diversity of Enset (Ensete ventricosum), an indigenous African relative of bananas (Musa) and a principal starch staple for 20 million Ethiopians. Wild enset reproduction occurs strictly by sexual outcrossing, but for cultivation, it is propagated clonally and associated with diversification and specialization into hundreds of named landraces. We applied tGBS sequencing to generate genome-wide genotypes for 192 accessions from across enset's cultivated distribution, and surveyed 1340 farmers on enset agronomic traits. Overall, reduced heterozygosity in the domesticated lineage was consistent with a domestication bottleneck that retained 37% of wild diversity. However, an excess of putatively deleterious missense mutations at low frequency present as heterozygotes suggested an accumulation of mutational load in clonal domesticated lineages. Our evidence indicates that the major domesticated lineages initially arose through historic sexual recombination associated with a domestication bottleneck, followed by the amplification of favourable genotypes through an extended period of clonal propagation. Among domesticated lineages, we found a significant phylogenetic signal for multiple farmer-identified food, nutrition and disease resistance traits and little evidence of contemporary recombination. The development of future-climate adapted genotypes may require crop breeding, but outcrossing risks exposing deleterious alleles as homozygotes. This trade-off may partly explain the ubiquity and persistence of clonal propagation over recent centuries of comparative climate stability.
