The Indian AYUSH Ministry has charted out an ambitious plan for
mass cultivation of leafy vegetables, which forms part of Ayurveda diet, in
tie-up with the Agriculture Ministry, a step that will also address shortage of
certain medicinal ingredients.
“We’ve a tie-up with the Agriculture Ministry under the
Agroforestry policy. We’ll be asking to include some of the leafy vegetables (mentioned
in Ayurveda) in the Agroforestry model so as to enable their cultivation in
large quantities. Definitely we’ll be implementing it in the coming days,” said
Dr J L N Sastry, Chief Executive Officer, National Medicinal Plant Board.
He was speaking as a panelist in the first of the
international webinar series being organized by the Ayush Valley Foundation in
association with the Ayurveda & Health Tourism Magazine on the topic ‘Can
we live with Corona’.
According to Ayurveda, dark green leafy vegetables like collard
greens, spinach, swiss chard, mustard greens, bok choy greens, sorrel, turnip greens and many varieties of kale have a special place in the daily
diet.
“Leafy vegetables mentioned in Ayurveda are being used (in
daily diet) even now in certain pockets of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. We’ll
initiate action to produce them in large quantities…Slowly we’ll go back to old
practices,” Sastry, the former head of Healthcare Research in Dabur Research
and Development Centre, added.
Meanwhile, the Ministry has stated that though clinical
trials and evaluations involving ayurvedic formulations have commenced, the
results will be out only by September end, thanks to the strict standards and
the fool-proof approach.
The statement comes amid claims from certain quarters of
successful medication for Covid-19.
“We’ve already initiated trial of AYUSH 64, a poly-herbal
antimalarial formulation. The clinical research of ‘Ashwagandha’ will start this week while that regarding Ayurveda
medicines like Giloy will commence
soon. The last one is happening at multiple places like Jamnagar and Jodhpur…
By September end, we’ll have some clarity about the results. Then we will share
with the public,” the senior official said.
The population-based AYUSH studies for prophylaxis of
Covid-19 disease are progressing at 42 centres. For instance two trials on Ashwagandha (progressing) and Chavanaprash (almost completed) are
being done in Hyderabad.
“Four individual trials are on…We’re also re-investigating
clinical evaluation results of certain ayurvedic interventions as part of our
fool-proof approach. High international standards are being followed and the
results scrutinised by various different scientist groups. Hence the process is
time-consuming,” he said.
The other panelists included Dr Narendra S Bhatt, Head of
CRIA Consultants Pvt Ltd and former CEO of Zandu Pharmaceuticals, and Dr
Cornelis Peters, Director, Europa Ayurveda Centre, Netherlands. Dr Madan
Thangavelu, noted Genome Biologist from the University of Cambridge, UK,
moderated the discussions.
