The 2009 ASHS Annual Conference

Agriculture Research Station, Virginia State University, PO Box 9061, Petersburg, VA 23806
There is increasing interest and trade in functional foods and herbal remedies as reflected by a growing market for crude herbal preparations and other natural compounds believed to have either or both functional and therapeutic properties. Most of the trade occurs online and creates opportunities and challenges for both scientists and consumers.
From a scientific perspective, interest in natural products should be supported by research to facilitate a more robust natural products industry build on standards and protocols derived from empirical data. However, the market as currently structured is ahead of the scientist, and out of reach of official oversight. The anonymity of internet commerce coupled with unregulated processing and sketchy labeling guidelines leave the industry open to fraud. Already, there are reports of consumer exposure to contaminated herbal preparations, and of adverse health reactions to various products. Overall, the situation calls for an urgent and systematic census of herbal and related products that are in the market, and their distribution within different ecologies. This will facilitate targeted prioritization of research to develop guidelines and parameters for processing, handling and labeling of different products.
In the current study, we took an inventory of medicinal plants found within the Commonwealth of Virginia based on information in a Digital Atlas of Virginia Flora (http://www.biol.vt.edu/digital_atlas/) and ‘Plants for a Future’ database (http://www.pfaf.org/). The Digital Atlas hosted by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI) is a comprehensive listing of native and introduced Virginia flora, and the ‘Plants for a Future’ database describes world niche crops and wild plants with specific localized applications including medicinal, culinary, and other uses. The site also includes species acceptability ratings for multiple uses. It is these ratings, together with Virginia data that have been used to identify species for research and potential recruitment to agriculture.