Medicinal plants used by Khondu tribes of Dumbriguda Mandal, Alluri Sitaramaraju district, Andhra Pradesh, India

We conducted an ethnomedical survey among Khondu tribal residents living in Dumbriguda Mandal, Alluri Sitaramaraju district, Andhra Pradesh. According to the ethnomedicinal survey, a total of 78 species of plants belonging to 73 genera and 45 families have been identified. Various traditional healers, tribal doctors, and old women of the tribal society were interviewed for this research. In the present study, 78 species were used to treat 37 different ailments/diseases, either individually or in combination. In the study, plants were used in unusual ways by the tribal people, demonstrating the revival of interest in traditional medicine.


Introduction
Indigenous herbal treatment is a part of the culture and the dominant mode of therapy in most developing countries. The World Health Organization has estimated that over 80% of the global population relies chiefly on traditional medicine [1]. It was officially recognized that 2500 plant species have medicinal value while over 6000 plants are estimated to be explored in traditional, folk and herbal medicine [2]. Ethnobotanical research can provide a wealth of information regarding both past and present relationships between plants and traditional societies. The ethnobotanical investigation has led to the documentation of a large number of wild plants used by tribes for meeting their multifarious requirements [3]. Andhra Pradesh State is ethnobotanically well-explored; most of the work done was during 1985-2002. Hemadri [4] wrote a paper on the procurement of raw drugs in Andhra Pradesh. Rao & Hamadri [5] published the book on Andhra Pradesh Mandumokkalu (The Medicinal Plants of Andhra Pradesh). Later, Hemadri wrote two books in Telugu, namely, Andhra Pradesh lo Vanamulikalu [6] and Shastravettalanu Akarshinstunna Girijana Vaidyam [7]. Rao & Prasad [8] enlisted the ethnomedicines from the tribes of Andhra Pradesh while R.V. Reddy et al. [9] studied the ethnobotany of less-known tuber-yielding plants of Andhra Pradesh. Krishnamurthy [10] published a paper on the tribal people of Rampa and Gudem agency of Godavari lower Division, East Godavari district. Banerjee [11] & Gupta et al. [12] has reported the ethnobotany of Araku Valley in Visakhapatnam district. The objectives of the present research are the collection, identification and documentation of the plants used by the Khondu tribal community and extensive exploration studies in the area to record first-hand information from the Khondu tribal practitioners.

Study area
The study area of Dumbriguda is one of the Mandal of Alluri Sitaramraju District. Alluri District is one of the North Eastern Coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh and it lies between 17 o -15' and 18 o -32' in Northern latitude and 18 o -54' and 83 o -30' in Eastern longitude. It is bounded on the North partly by neighboring districts known as Vizianagaram and the Orissa State, on the South by East Godavari District, on the West by Orissa State, and on the East by the Bay of Bengal. Dumbriguda is a mandal headquarter which consists of 22 Panchayats and 87 revenue villages. The total population of the area is 44,878 among them 93.43% are tribal communities. It is the first attempt on conducting an exploratory study towards understanding the traditional food system of tribal communities in this region, however, earlier workers had done some similar studies on uncultivated food plants in several other tribal areas in the country and within the state.

Methodology
Intensive field surveys were carried out during 2021-2022, covering all the seasons. Collected specimens were made into a herbarium as per the methods suggested by Jain & Rao [13]. The representative taxa were collected and identified with the help of floras [14][15][16] and made into a herbarium. The voucher specimens were housed in the Botany Department Herbarium (BDH), Department of Botany, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam.

Results and discussion
During exploration trips, medicinally useful information have been recorded on 78 plant species belonging to 73 genera and 45 families were recorded which are exploited by the Khondu tribals for their healthcare ( Figure 1). The familywise analysis of ethnomedicinal data revealed that of the 45 families, the dominant ones are Asteraceae represented by 5 species followed by Liliaceae, Fabaceae, Euphorbiaceae, and Apocynaceae with 4 species, Solanaceae, Caesalpiniaceae, Lythraceae, Asclepiadaceae, Araceae, Anacardiaceae and Myrtaceae with 3 species each, Loganiaceae, Lamiaceae, Arecaceae, and Acanthaceae with 2 species each remaining families were single species.
From the present study, it is evident that the local people used trees (31), followed by herbs (28), shrubs (11), climbers (7) and parasites (1), (Figure 2, Table. 1). Depending upon the plant part used for medicinal purposes root and stem bark constitutes the highest percentage (15) followed by leaf (13), seed (6), Tuber and root bark (4), whole plant, stem, rhizome, fruit and flower (3) and remaining were single. Intensive surveys and repeated personal interviews in different pockets resulted in coming across 37 diseases in the area.

Conclusion
Industrialization, urbanization, modernization and the consequent developmental activities on one side and acculturation of the ethnic societies on the other have set in motion causing destruction of forests and devastation of ethnobotanical knowledge. It is high time now, that all the Governmental and Non-Governmental Organizations should redouble their efforts to conserve plants of potential economic value, particularly ethnomedicinal plants and the ecosystems they inhabit. The scientific validation of these remedies may help in discovering new drugs from the plant species. The information on therapeutic uses of plants may provide great potential for discovering new drugs and promoting awareness among the people to use them as remedies in the health care system. Moreover, it may further be mentioned that over-exploitation of these species in the name of medicine may lead some species ultimately to the disappearance in future.