Immature harvesting of Baibidang (Embelia ribes) fruits and its impact on raw material quality: A case of Nagpur forest division, Maharashtra

Abstract

The unripe harvesting of medicinally important commercial species from natural forest by various stakeholders not only threatened plant resources but also deteriorating quality of the raw produce. An attempt has been made to find out present collection practices, visual inspection of market samples and prevalent malpractices impacting raw material quality of Baibidang (Embelia ribes) in the Nagpur market. The city Nagpur is a major trading centre of raw medicinal plants of Central India. Observations reveal that fruits were collected prematurely by uprooting whole plant from wild. Visual analysis of market samples of its fruits shows presence of majority of infected, ill developed and hollow fruits. On the other hand, samples collected from forest after maturation contains maximum good quality (96.0%) fruits. Sample analysis also shows that traders as well as collectors mix Poi (Basella rubra) fruits as adulterants, which are similar in appearance and growing in the back yards of most of the villages as vegetable or as weeds. Fruits were collected at unripe or green stage. Broken fruits of the same species were generally mixed along with chaff matter to increase the volume. The study suggests that there is need to strengthen awareness generation and training to all the stakeholders about maintaining quality and period of collection at field level. It was also observed that most of the traders as well as collectors are unaware about WHO standards of Goods harvesting practices.