Vadodara, March 29: IT’s a new job that the botany students across the state now have on their hands. Come summer holidays and the students would be out in the fields to find uncommon yet traditional knowledge. After proper documentation and verification of knowledge, the source would be helped to get a patent on it. This project on ‘Scouting and Documenting Traditional Knowledge’ has been initiated by the Botany Department, MSU in collaboration with the National Innovation Foundation (NIF).

As part of this project, botany students in the state would be encouraged to visit nearby villages in their districts and try and scout for traditional knowledge, mainly related to plants. Professors define this traditional knowledge as uncommon use of the lesser-known plants.

‘‘It can be anything—a herb or a tree, being used for some medical, nutritional or pesticidal value. People from rural areas generally use plants for varied purposes, which are not always documented, and can be made use of on a larger scale,’’ explained Prof M Daniel, Head, Department of Botany, MSU. Daniel further stated that they would try to bring about awareness among botany professors, who would then ask their students to collect this information during the summer vacations.

A day-long seminar on the topic was held at the Botany Department on Tuesday. The conveners at the seminar and for the programme are Daniel and Prof Anil Gupta, IIMA, who helped set up NIF.

The seminar, which was organised by the Botany Department and the NIF, was attended by professors from colleges of North, Central and South Gujarat, while a similar seminar would be held at Rajkot for the colleges of Saurashtra and Rajkot within a fortnight.

The students would be expected to collect the uncommon plants, details about their use and all the relevant documents, which they will submit to the professors after the summer break. This would, in turn, be verified by the MSU Botany department, which will help the students and the NIF to identify the scientific name of the plant and its characteristics. After proper doumentation, NIF will verify the authenticity of the document and help the source get a provisional patent for it.