Arya Vaidya Pharmacy, India

Dr.P.Pushpangadan Ph.D, the renowned plant scientist of our country and recipient of many national and international awards including this year‚ Padmashri from Government of India was felicitated at The Ayurvedic Trust, Coimbatore on May 1st 2011 at 02.00PM. The program was conducted at the conference hall of the Ayurvedic Trust. Dr. P. Pushpangadan delivered a lecture in his area of expertise. Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Asst. Director, The Ayurvedic Trust coordinated the program. The Welcome Address was delivered by Sri. Devidas Varier, Arya Vaidya Pharmacy. Dr. GG Gangadharan, Jt. Director, IAIM, Bangalore introduced Dr. P. Pushpangadan and presented an outline of his important achievements. Dr. S. Rajasekharan, Senior Scientist from TBGRI, Thiruvananthapuram also felicitated Dr. P. Pushpangadan. Sri. P.R. Krishna Kumar, Managing Director of Arya Vaidya Pharmacy congratulated Dr. P. Pushpangadan for his outstanding achievements in the field of Medicinal Plants research. Sri. Krishnadas Varier, Arya Vaidya Pharmacy delivered the Vote of Thanks. Students, research scholars and experts working on medicinal plants attended the meeting.

Dr. P. Pushpangadan has over 37 years of research experience in plant sciences. His multidisciplinary training helped him to gain better understanding of the biological systems and to demonstrate exceptional skill, expertise and originality in the pursuit of both basic and applied research in Cytogenetics, Plant Breeding, Bioprospecting, Biotechnology, Conservation Biology, Ethnobiology, Ethnopharmacology and pharmacognosy. His action oriented R&D activities demonstrated that the rich biodiversity and associated traditional knowledge systems can be converted into economic wealth in an ecologically sound and sustainable manner with appropriate intervention of S&T to the best advantage of the local people.In 1983, he was appointed the Chief Co-ordinator of All India Coordinated Research Project on Ethnobiology (AICRPE), launched by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. AICRPE is a multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary research programme was essentially a logical outcome of the great vision made by Prof. M.S. Swaminathan in 1976. It was aimed at documenting the multidimensional perspectives of the life, culture traditions and knowledge systems on the biological resources utilization by the tribal communities of India. It has 25 centres located in various Universities and National Laboratories with over 600 scientists belonging to various disciplines such as Botany, Zoology, Anthropology, Chemistry, Pharmacology and Social Sciences. As Chief Co-ordinator, Dr. Pushpangadan guided, supervised and coordinated the research activities in these centers. Based on the AICRPE data, he is developing a digitized National database on Ethnobiology.Dr. Pushpangadan established the first ever full fledged Ethnopharmacology Division in the country at TBGRI. The interdisciplinary Ethnopharmacology Division was under his direct supervision and has developed and patented over 10 scientifically validated and standardized herbal drugs. One of such herbal drug named 'Jeevani' was developed by taking lead from a tribal community. While transferring the technology for production of the drug 'Jeevani' to a pharmaceutical firm, the Arya Vaidya Pharmacy, Dr. Pushpangadan as Director, TBGRI ensured to share the license fee and royalty with the tribal community on 1:1 basis. By this action Dr. Pushpangadan brought the unique distinction to India as one of the first in the world to recognize the Intellectual Property Rights of a tribal community and thereby implemented the Article 8(j) of the UN-Convention of Biological Diversity. This model of benefit sharing is now widely appreciated in the world over and referred as TBGRI model or Pushpangadan Model of Benefit Sharing.