Abstract:
Pakistan being endowed with variety of climates, ecological precincts and topographical regions is gifted with inimitable biodiversity encompassing wide range of species. Overall, more than 6000 flowering plants has been reported from Pakistan, of which about 400-600 are medicinally important. The deserts show great diversity in terms of both their landscapes and their geomorphological processes. The major deserts in Pakistan are Thar, Cholistan, Thal, Chagi and Kharan located in Sindh, Punjab and Baluchistan respectively. Total area of Pakistan under deserts is 11.0 million hectares making about 14 percent of the whole country and the most populated of the desert areas of the world. Deserts are particularly important for their endemic medicinal plant species. Despite the hostile conditions prevailing in the deserts, there are plentiful native plants which are used by the people of this arid region. Some of these plants are an integral part of the desert ecosystem and are closely related to the economy of the area. Due to anthropogenic pressure, natural disasters, ongoing famines in deserts, overexploitation is frequently believed to seriously affect the deserts of Pakistan. There are more than 15 functional botanical gardens in Pakistan where conservation is carried out to protect threatened plant species but such gardens are not established to protect the threatened species of deserts in Pakistan. There is dire need to establish desert gardens in Pakistan especially in deserts where most threatened species may be conserved on priority.
Page(s):
51-51
DOI:
DOI not available
Published:
Journal: Abstract Book on Second International Conference on Recent Approaches in Plant Sciences (RAPS-23) 4-5 May 2023 , Volume: 0, Issue: 0, Year: 2023