The study of ethnoveterinary medicinal plants at Mojana Wodera district, central Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethnoveterinary study was conducted from March 2020 to December 2020 in Mojana Wodera district, centeral Ethiopia. The study was aimed to identify and document ethnoveterinary medicinal plant species and traditional medicinal knowledge of the traditional health practitioners. A total of 105 informants were selected purposely and volunteer sampling approaches, and from these total informants, 15 key informants were identified based on their knowledge difference. Semi-structured interviews, field observation, and discussion were employed to collect information. Descriptive statistical method was employed to analyze the collected data. Informant Consensus Factor (ICF) values were calculated to determine the most common livestock ailment categories that occurred and identify potentially effective medicinal plant species in respective disease categories. T-test was applied to compare knowledge difference. The result showed that a higher average (p< 0.05) was recorded for key informants, illiterate and elder group; however, there is no significance difference (p = 0.53) between gender. A total of 33 ethnoveterinary medicinal plant species, which belong to 23 families and 31 genera were identified. Family Asteraceae and family Solanaceae were the dominant. From this total number of plant species (12.12%) were endemic for Ethiopia. The finding showed that shrubs accounted for 39.39% followed by herbs (36.36%) and trees (15.15%). The medicinal plant parts that were most commonly utilized were leaf (55.36%) followed by root (23.21%) and seed (8.93%) respectively. Higher ICF was recorded for Blackleg (0.82) followed by general illness (0.8) and pasturalosis. In this study, Vernonia amygdalina was the most effective medicinal plants to treat blackleg.