Medicinal Plant Databases: Analyzing Strengths, Weaknesses and Innovations for Future Improvements

In the ancient period, medicinal plants were used in different kinds of current medical systems and also used in ancient medical systems. It also helps in the treatment of various kinds of disease. According to ancient evidence, ~ 60,000 years ago, many medicinal plants were used as drugs (Dinda and Saha, 2022). Many people use medicinal plants for the treatment of different kinds of diseases (Maranet al., 2022). They are viewed as treating nature (Naghizadehet al., 2020). But currently, the use of these medicinal plants only as alternative medicines is increasing around the world, like in India, China, Germany (Bultumet al., 2019). Mathematical statistics show that ~80% of the world’s population uses medicinal plants or their parts as medicine for treatment of different types of diseases (Sawadaet al., 2018). The large number of medicinal plants are used widely in European Union countries (Chen, 2011). In some countries, phyto medicinal plants or medicinal plants are part of their modern health-care systems (Zenget al., 2018). Medicinal plants are called on of five main parts classic likes naturopathy (phytotherapy, hydrotherapy, exercise therapy, dietetic therapy and ‘lifestyle regulation’ therapy) (Jooset al., 2012). There is great interest in many different groups of health care, like pharmacists and non-medical medicine practitioners, are interested in medicinal plants (Beer and Ostermann, 2003). Medicinal plants are used in the official healthcare system in China (Wuet al., 2019). About 95% of general hospitals use medicinal plant database in traditional medicine departments and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for treatment of different kinds of diseases patients (Agyei-Baffouret al., 2017).

Also in India, an acronym for Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa and Homeopathy (AYUSH) is a well-organized department giving health-care services in both departments, public and private. AYUSH has a wider view empower in decreasing the burden of disease and tries to encourage these systems and mix this organization with conventional medicine (Rudraet al., 2017). An effective segregation scheme will encourage communication and mutual understanding among various medical systems, measure medical care in its totality, ensure just concentration of resources, give a training and educational program for both traditional medicine and conventional medicine, (AYUSH) and conventional medicine are sharing information between them are very important for the development for medicinal plants database. Currently, there is a limited amount of information about medicinal plants database available in journals, manuals and textbooks (Mohanrajet al., 2018). Recently, with the spread of scientific databases, a unique way has been formed of sharing information on medicinal plant databases. These medicinal plant databases collect and give information on medicinal plants, medicinal herbs, ingredients, 2D/3D structures of compounds, related target proteins, relevant diseases and metabolic toxicity, which are primary in medicinal plant database herbs for further research studies for scientists, physicians and pharmacists (Wanget al., 2009). They assist in many ways of biological research, containing information about a gene or a protein and complex applications for research work (Narayananet al., 2022). These databases become more useful when there is a correct volume of information, its correct interpretation and the regular updating of the content takes place in it (Danisman, 2016).

Medicinal plants are the leading sources of numerous expensive chemicals and/or drugs. Over 1300 medicinal plants are utilized in European countries, 90% are from wild sources. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the World Wildlife Fund, about 50,000-80,000 flowering plants are utilized because of their medicinal values (Britanet al., 2018). Also, the National Medicinal Plant Board India has estimated that India has 17,000-18,000 species of flowering plants, out of which 6000-7000 are known to have medicinal application ancient medicinal systems such as ayurveda, siddha, unani, and homeopathy. About 960 medicinal plants are in the trade industry, of which only 178 are known to have annual consumption levels of more than 100 MT (metric tons) (Dankaret al., 2018). The increase in human population and the demand for natural medicines have aggravated the loss of medicinal plant species, 100-1000 times the rate of natural extinction. Although this threat has been known for decades, it has resulted in the increase in loss of species and habitat destruction worldwide. This chapter reviews advances in the application of tissue culture for the in vitro regeneration of rare endangered or threatened medicinal plants and enhancement of various pharmaceutics, drugs, flavors, colors, and medicinal compound production in medicinal plants (Kerwin, 2010). Medicinal plants have been utilized in traditional medicine in the worldwide so it’s refereed as ethno medicine (Ningthoujamet al., 2012). This review article gives a presents a view of the present-day status of and future direction in medicinal plant database. These medicinal plant databases are at the junction of phytochemistry and plant biology.

It also causes achievement in evolution mechanisms and systematic of medicinal plant genomes, origin and evolution of plant genotype and metabolic phenotype, interaction between medicinal plant genomes and environment, and correlation between gnomic diversity and metabolite diversity, etc (O’Boyleet al., 2011). The use of medicinal plant databases the emerging high-end genomics technologies. It can also be enlarged from crop plants to traditional medicinal plants to action the medicinal plant breeding and transform them into the living factory of medicinal compounds. The utility of medicinal plant database in molecular phylogeny and phylo genomics in predicting chemo-diversity and bio prospecting is also particular within the context of use of natural product-based drug discovery and development (“UniProt: A worldwide hub of protein knowledge,” 2018). The symbolic case studies of medicinal plant genome, phylogeny, and evolution are concise to illustrate the discussion of knowledge pedigree and the examples like omics-based approaches (Liet al., 2018). The Medicinal plant database updates our awareness about plant genome evolution and enables the molecular breeding of medicinal plants and the sustainable utilization of plant pharmaceutical resources (Sorokina and Steinbeck, 2020). Plants also makes a large number of orangic compounds, some of organic compounds are present in large quantity in plant but these are not directly involving in growth and development (Bodenreider, 2008). These organic compounds are known as Plant Secondary Compounds (PSC), and play an important role in the contribution of all plant kingdom taxonomies. These plants’ secondary compounds also play an important role in major activities in limited colors, tastes and odors, as well as limited defense properties in all plants (Lagorceet al., 2017).

These plant secondary compounds are also used as traditional medicines and pharmaceuticals for human beings. For example, the bio-active molecules of green tea being used in the prevention of obesity or the growth of the cardiovascular system (Degtyarenkoet al., 2007). The phytochemical Compounds are present in plant Cannabis sativa, which is known as phyto cannabinoids, are used as therapeutic tools in cancer, central nervous system disorders, epilepsy, and other health problems (Gaultonet al., 2011). These Plant Secondary Compounds (PSC) contains phenolic compounds such a resveratrol, present in grapes and wine, have shown medical neuron-protective properties (Shahinet al., 2021). There are about 100 natural product databases that have been created in the last 20 years. There are some examples of natural products databases like SuperNatural II, The Universal Natural Products Database, NP Atlas ZINC, NPASS, BindingDB, NPEdia, 3DMET, and the CNPD (Pence and Williams, 2010). Some of phyto chemical Compounds are only as a facility of chemical compounds. Some of phyto chemical Compounds are present in the relative quantity in the databases but do not allow for the state, activity (Menget al., 2022). Upload of all the structural and physico chemical features of a particular set of compounds. Upload of all the structural and physico chemical features of a particular set of compounds (Nguyen-Voet al., 2019). Also, in other cases, there is no link to related or original databases.

Without these characteristics and considering the large number of molecules that are currently registered in public databases, a given repository of biological information might not be useful (Jamalet al., 2016).

In addition, some databases include experimental and computer-based characteristics of the stored compounds, but they often do not consider additional analyses or correlations between the data. Remarkable, our database allows finding molecules by name or structure, to group and bulk downloading of properties and structures (Chenet al., 2021). Moreover, all compounds are linked to the original sources and for most cases, several new physicochemical features were calculated and are available. It is also worth pointing out that the conventional discovery of new bio active compounds from natural resources requires laborious screening of several compound libraries. However, with increasing insights into the structure function relationship of target proteins, today it is possible to screen virtually those large chemical libraries, as well as subsets of known compounds to predict new activities (Mumtazet al., 2016). Although a large number of databases have been created over the years, it is currently not possible to efficiently extract delimited 3D-structural information along with physicochemical and pharmaceutical ones of a given group of plant secondary compounds needed to perform such screens. Modern medicinal plant databases are different in stored total of data, specialization, functionality and type of access (Farsaniet al., 2020). But with a few exceptions, all databases have large amounts of data and contain complex information from multiple sources (Visser and Weideman, 2011). Medicinal plant databases are a group of the same specifications, taxonomy, common names, location, medicinal uses and used parts, and modern scientific information, including physicochemical properties, ingredients, genomics information, mechanisms of action are available in medicinal plants databases.

The information is stored in the format of texts or images. Medicinal plant databases play more economic role in new drug discoveries in the future research work. Currently, the contribution of medicinal plants in drug discovery helps in the construction of many new databases with advanced features and the fall of numerous databases (Apweiler, 2004). Medicinal herbs databases now main focus on phytochemical and physicochemical properties due to new efforts for drug discovery from medicinal plant. For increasing demand for medicinal plant databases and their contents, it is necessary to have more up-to-date and efficient future design.

The aim of this review article is to study the current types of medicinal plant databases, and mainly focus on their unique features, their URLs, strength and their weaknesses. To collect information on medicinal plants, categorize databases based on definite features, like

Phytochemical Databases, Pharmacological Databases, Ethnobotanical Databases, Clinical Trial Databases.

Global Databases, Regional Databases (e.g., databases focusing on specific continents or countries).

Databases categorize plants based on their botanical families.

Web-based Databases, Desktop Applications, Mobile Applications.

Finding a list of medicinal plant databases was carried out via Google and PubMed. A search of published papers introducing medicinal plant databases found by a Google scholar. Both published papers and databases were reviewed by the authors. Research Papers with an active database on the web were included in the review. To collect information on plants, categorize databases based on definite features, like all the reported databases in this review article provide information about the list of plants, their features, used part (i.e. roots, leaves, seeds, flowers and fruits), common names and their synonyms that were collected from various resources (e.g. traditional medicine textbooks/ online databases, scientific journals and National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Taxonomy).Inclusion and exclusion criteria for databases are described in Table 1.

Plants databases are categorized according to based on definite features, like content type, facilities/features, status of the URL. Discuss about the strength and weaknesses of databases. Also, discuss about some of the unique features or innovations of the databases. In Table 2, show that plant databases are categorized based on definite features, like content type, facilities/features its URL. Phytochemical Databases give information about molecular structures/properties, Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion and Toxicity (ADMET)-related properties and ingredients have been gathered in plant databases from computational methods (e.g. online specialized chemical databases such as Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases (PEB), Indian Medicinal Plants, Phytochemistry and Therapeutics 2.0 (IMPPAT 2.0)(Mohanrajet al., 2018), PubChem, ChEBI (Boyleet al., 2013), ChEMBL(Joneset al., 2011), ChemSpider, ChemBioOffce (Hussainet al., 2021), Balloon and Open Babel, FAF-Drugs4 web server and RDKit (Brockdorff and Wei, 2021). Pharmacological Databases give information on the pharmacological effects and traditional utility of medicinal herbs (Mahmudet al., 2022), such as HerbMed, Herb Database (Herbal Medicine Resource) etc. Ethnobotanical databases help as a facility of traditional knowledge,international or local scales and facilitate data management and information sharing with other researchers (Heet al., 2022.such as African Ethnobotany Database (AEDB) (Graset al., 2018), Medicinal Plant Database (MPDB) (“List of tables,” 2013).

Clinical plant databases are rich resources that give information about plants with medicinal properties, such as DIMPSAR: Datasets for Indian medicinal plant species analysis (Wuet al., 2019), pubmed etc. These databases serve knowledge related to various features of medicinal plants, including their botanical names, vernacular names, medicinal uses, and more. Global plant databases are valuable resources that give information about various plant species from around the world, such as The Plant List (Bartow,2016), Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) (Columbus, 2008) etc. A regional plant database is a collection of information about plants that grow in a specific geographical area. These databases serve various aims, including scientific research, conservation efforts, and understanding the diversity of plant species such as Australian Plant Name Index (APNI) (Sharr, 1996), South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) (“African plant database,” 2017). Plant databases based on their botanical families maintain a broad Medicinal Plant Database and provides information on scientific names, family, vernacular names, medicinal uses, species locations, and images of her-barium specimens such as South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) (“African plant database,” 2017), The Plant List (Bartow, 2016). Web-based plant databases play an essential role in conserving and sharing knowledge about plant species. allows users to mean plants by action pictures of leaves, flowers, or fruits and give data on recognised plant species such as Plants of the World Online (POWO) (“Southern Africa (Vol 13, 2016),” n.d., The Plant List. (Bartow, 2016) Desktop plants database applications for ensuing plant genetic resources, give tools for data entry, analysis, and visualization. The mobile plant database application allows users to mean plants by action pictures of leaves, flowers, or fruits. Give data on recognised plant species such as My Herbarium (Conroy and Noon, 1996). Mobile plant databases applications allow users to mean plants by action pictures of leaves, flowers, or fruits. Give data on recognised plant species Organized for gardening enthusiasts, this app helps users identify plants and associate them with a gardening community such as Plant snap (Conroy and Noon, 1996). Table 3 shows the strengths and weaknesses of databases plant databases based on definite features. Table 4 shows the unique features or innovations of the plant databases based on definite features.

After studying a few the medicinal plant databases. Noticed that ethno-pharmacological information in medicinal plant database about medicinal plants are available in some minimal standards in medicinal plant database development. They reported some challenges related to sharing information in developing medical plant databases. Ethnobotanical issues (like lack of benchmark model, intellectual property rights, multiple taxonomies, conservation strategies and bio-piracy) and technical issues (e.g., lack of regular updates, non-disclosure of publishing year, inaccessibility to the website or relocation to other websites, evolution of hardware and software, obsolescence of systems and high cost of system maintenance) are major challenges reputable in this review article.

Medicinal plants give the potency to discovering new medicine from nature. Online Medicinal plant databases provide with information about their new approaches, contents. Its help in building is crucial for achieving Medicinal plant databases. This review article shows that every medicinal plant database is different in terms of content and information representation. There are some common standards for creating databases (in terms of information) for different parameters. It helps different classes of users to separate information and establish complex knowledge. This review gives a visual view of the medicinal plant databases. Medicinal plant databases can collect more useful information from different sources (e.g. scientific databases and differentiated databases), approaches (e.g. computational methods) and programs/software (e.g. ChemBioOffice and CMap). All users can easily search, download and visualize these data, as well as the relationships between database components. Medicinal plant databases have been the main source of treatment for different human diseases from aging. Interest in plant-based products gives an idea about the discoveries of modern drugs has grown in recent years. However, research on exploring the medicinal plant database for modern therapeutics is seriously limited due to our incomplete understanding of the therapeutic mechanism of action. Most of the information existing about the use of medicinal plants database in different types of disease treatment and medicine formula in traditional medicine textbooks are based on human experiences, not based on scientific experiments (e.g. Randomized Control Trials). Existing a comprehensive medicinal plant database with various modern biomedical database features could set the way for new plant-based drug discoveries.