Journal of Medicinal Plants
Year:2017 | Volume:16 | Issue:61|Papers Count:9

Regarding to Dr. Richard Stone’s report entitled “Iran, a shady market for papers flourishes” published in Science 15th September 2016. There are several points in the articles that require particular attention. The report, although presents some truth, lacks depth and balance on a problem that is not unique to Iran.

The causes of female infertility are multifaceted, and may extend to either of the partners or even both. Indeed, the root issues of infertility can be related to both sexes: approximately 50 percent of infertility is caused by female conditions, while approximately 40 percent is male related. It is also worth noting that in 25 percent of infertile couples both partners will have a fertility problem. Herbs originate from plants and plant extracts from a wide variety of natural resources, including plant leaves, bark, flowers, roots, and fruits and berries. Evidence based herbal medicine may present an effective treatment for female infertility. In this review we present some solid evidence for role of herbal medicine in the treatment of female infertility.

Background: Drying is the most common way to preserve quality of aromatic and medicinal plants. Chosen drying methods can affect on the essential oil content and composition of medicinal plants.Objective: This study aimed to assess the changes in essential oil constitutes of catnip aerial part under various drying methods.Methods: The experiment was performed as the randomized complete block design (RCBD) with 10 treatments and 3 replications. The treatments were included the freshly harvested plants, sun-drying, shade-drying, oven-drying at 35, 45, and 55oC, microwave-drying at 100 and 200 W, and initial sun-drying followed by subsequent shade-drying and oven-drying at 45oC.Results: The result indicated that the various drying methods had a significant effect (p ≤ 0.01) on the essential oil content and compositions. The highest amount of essential oil was observed in the oven-drying at 55oC. GC-MS analysis revealed the presence 9 compounds in the essential oil of catnip, which three isomers of nepetalactone with a predominance of 4a- a, 7- a, 7a- b -nepetalactone were major essential oil components. Although, the amount of 4a- a, 7- a, 7a- b -nepetalactone were reduced by oven-drying at 55oC, but other the isomers of nepetalactone were increased. However, the total content of three isomers of nepetalactone were equal in the fresh catnip with the dried plants by the oven drier at 55oC.Conclusion: In general, the oven-drying at 55oC is recommended as an effective method to dry the catnip.

Background: Malva sylvestris L. (M. sylvestris) has antioxidant property and is widely used in the traditional medicine to treat gastrointestinal, respiratory, skin and urological disorders.Objective: In this study, the protective effect of M. sylvestris against sodium fluoride-induced nephrotoxicity in the rat was evaluated.Methods: The M. sylvestris flower extract was prepared and injected intraperitoneally at the doses of 100, 200, 400 mg/kg/day to rat groups (10 in each group) for 1 week and subsequently 600 ppm sodium fluoride was added  to the rats drinking water for 1 additional week. After these steps, the rat serum levels of urea, creatinine, reduced glutathione, catalase and malondialdehyde were determined. The histopathology of the rats’ kidney was also studied. In this study, vitamin C (10 mg/kg/day) was used as positive control.Results: Sodium fluoride administration increased levels of BUN, creatinine, glutathione, catalase activity and decreased malondialdehyde levels indicating induction of nephrotoxicity in the rats. M. sylvestris extract pretreatment significantly decreased the BUN and creatinine levels (P<0.05). Catalase activity and glutathione levels were significantly increased by M. sylvestris (P<0.05). All three doses of the M. sylvestris decreased the malondialdehyde level, but it was significant only for the dose of 400 mg/kg/day (P<0.05). The Malva sylvestris effects were comparable with those of vitamin C. Histopathological findings also showed protective effects of M. sylvestris against the renal damage induced by sodium fluoride.Conclusion: The results suggest that M. sylvestris has protective effects against sodium fluoride-induced nephrotoxicity which maybe mediated by the antioxidant activity of the plant flavonoids.

Background: Plant growth regulators (PGRs) have important roles in many processes such as germination, seedling growth, nutrition uptake, morphogenesis, ripening, etc.Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of gibberellic acid, indole butyric acid, and methanol as plant growth regulators on morpho-physiological and phytochemical features in Thymus vulgaris L.Methods: The farm experiment based on a randomized complete block design was performed at 2014. The treatments were included G1M1 (GA3 50 ppm + methanol 20 %), G1M2 (GA3 50 ppm + methanol 40 %), G2M1 (GA3 100 ppm + methanol 20 %), G2M2 (GA3 100 ppm + methanol 40 %), I1M1 (IBA 50 ppm + methanol 20 %), I1M2 (IBA 50 ppm + methanol 40 %), I2M1 (IBA 100 ppm + methanol 20 %), I2M2 (IBA 100 ppm + methanol 40 %), G1I2M2 (GA3 50 ppm + IBA 100 ppm + methanol 40 %), G1I2M2 (GA3 100 ppm + IBA 50 ppm + methanol 40 %), and control (distillate water).Results: The results showed that the combination of GA3 or IBA along with methanol changed significantly leaf length and width, number of branches, leaf dry weight, stem dry weight, plant dry weight, seed weight, essential oil content and thymol amount. The highest values of the most traits were observed in I1M1 treatment.Conclusion: Methanol combination with one of the GA3 or IBA can improve morpho-physiological and phytochemical traits of thyme (Thymus vulgaris L.). Thus, the most effective PGRs combination was related to GA3 50 ppm + Methanol 20 % and IBA 50 ppm + Methanol 20 %.

Background: The leaves, roots and seeds of Lovage (Levisticum officinale Koch) being used as an herb, vegetable and spice.Objective: The aim of this study is evaluation of the changes of phytochemical compound in aerial parts of the Lovage plants at different developmental stages as well as antioxidant activity.Methods: The plants were harvested from Hezar Mountain. After drying, essential oils were extracted by steam distillation. To identify the essential components GC and GC-MS was used. Antioxidant activity of samples was examined by diphenylpicrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assay.Results: The average yield of essential oil was respectively, 2.3% and 3.1% and 1.5% respectively, in vegetative, Flowering and seed stage. The oil analysis results showed that 21 compounds were identified in the vegetative stage. b-phellandrene (10.7%) and α-Terpinyl acetate (% 38.9) and Curzerene (% 10.6) were the major compound. in the reproductive stage, 22 compounds were identified including b -phellandrene (20.3%) and a-Terpinyl acetate (% 20.4) and g-Cadinene (12.1%). in the seed stage b -phellandrene (21.1%) and a-Terpinyl acetate (% 25.3) and Sabinene (10.2%) were the highest. Analysis of variance showed that the effect of harvesting time has significant effect on plant height, stem branch number and yield of oil. The Higher antioxidant power was observed respectively in the flowering stage (83%), vegetative stage (68%) and seed stage (60%).Conclusion: The phytochemical and antioxidant compounds in Levisticum officinale depend on the phenological stage.

Background: Since alkaloids are nitrogenous compounds, the availability of nitrogen (N) is expected to play an important role in the biosynthesis and accumulation of alkaloids in plants. Nitrogen has been found to increase the content of alkaloids in some of the medicinal plants.Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the effects of nitrogen bio-fertilizers, conventional nitrogen fertilizer, and nitrogen nano-chelate fertilizer on the content of tropane alkaloids in Hyoscyamus niger L.Methods: This experiment was conducted in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with 8 treatments, and 3 replications. The experimental treatments included 2 L.h-1 nitroxin, 1 kg.h-1 Azotobacter, and 10 t.h-1 vermicompost each as bio-fertilizer, 150 kg.h-1 urea as a conventional chemical fertilizer of nitrogen, and nitrogen nano-chelate fertilizer with three amounts of 3, 5, and 7 percent, and control treatment (without nitrogen fertilizer).Results: The results showed that the effects of bio-fertilizers, conventional nitrogen fertilizer, and nitrogen nano-chelate fertilizer were significant on the scopolamine and hyoscyamine content in black henbane at the level of 1%. The highest content of hyoscyamine (HYO) was related to the treatments of 5% per hectare nitrogen nano-chelate, and the maximum amount of scopolamine (SCO) was observed in the treatments of 3 and 5% nitrogen nano-chelate fertilizers. On the other hand, the lowest values of hyoscyamine and scopolamine were related to the treatment of 7% nitrogen nano-chelate fertilizer, and nitroxin treatment, respectively.Conclusion: Generally, the highest yield of alkaloids content in black henbane were obtained by application of 3 and 5% nitrogen nano-chelate fertilizers.

Background: In the recent decade, artificial drying has been one of the most important needs of the pharmaceutical industries. In addition, different drying methods have different effects on the quantity and quality of the essential oils produced from medicinal plants.Objective: The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of different drying methods (shade and oven drying at 35oC and 55oC) in comparison with the fresh sample on the essential oil yield and volatile composition of M. officinalis.Methods: This experiment was conducted in completely randomized design with three replicates. The essential oil samples were isolated by hydrodistillation in a Clevenger type apparatus and analyzed using GC and GC-MS methods.Results: Different drying treatments had a significant effect on the content of M. officinalis essential oil (ranging from 0.08 to 0.3 % v/w; overall average of 0.22% v/w). The main components of the essential oil of shade dried, oven-dried at 35oC and oven-dried at 55oC samples were b-caryophyllene, geranial and g-cadinene, respectively. Oven drying at 55oC resulted in disappearance of neral, geranial and neryl acetate. Sesquiterpene hydrocarbons constituted the principal fraction of all samples, followed by oxygenated monoterpenes, except the oil of oven dried sample at 55°C in which oxygenated sesquiterpene represented as the second main fraction.Conclusion: The highest essential oil yield was obtained from oven drying at 35°C which conserves the characteristic aroma of the spice, so this method seems to be more advisable for drying of M. officinalis.

Background: Hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis L.) is herbaceous perennial plants of Lamiaceae family grown in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Northern Africa.Objective: In this research, the effect of harvesting time was studied on essential oil, photosynthetic pigment, and some morphological characteristics of hyssop.Methods: A Field experiment was carried out during 2015/2016 at the Research farm of Payam Noor University of Marand, Iran. The experimental design was laid out as randomized complete block design with three replicates. The three harvesting time (pre-flowering, beginning of flowering and full flowering stages) were arranged in experimental plots.Results: Results indicated that the percentage of essential oil varied for 0.459 to 0.618 in different stage of plant growth. Hyssop essential oil yields increased with time and the highest value of measured traits included plant high, stem diameter, number of secondary and flowering branches, dry weight, chlorophyll (a, b and total), carotenoid, total anthocyanins and total flavonoids was obtained for collected plants in full flowering stage.Conclusion: Overall, the harvesting in full flowering stage was the best time in respect of essential oils content and morphological characteristics in hyssop.