Ecosystem Services Indicators for the Medicinal and Aromatic Potential of poorly studied Plant Taxa: an Application on the Endemic Flora of the Peloponnese, Greece

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Article's abstract: The interest in new natural products and herbal raw materials increases in a variety of scientific and industrial fields, but many plant taxa of restricted distribution tend to be overlooked as potential assets. Their large number precludes their study and valorization. Therefore, there is a dire need to develop tools for assessing the plant taxa potential as ecosystem service providers, to prioritize the research efforts and to enhance conservation priorities. With the aim to identify taxa of interest as potential medicinal and aromatic plants (MAP), among the taxa of a given flora, we developed a set of indicators. These indicators are based on the available scientific literature and are formulated even for taxa of restricted distribution, based on their closely related species in terms of taxonomy, phylogeny, distribution, or in use in approved herbal medicine. The developed indicators are herein applied to the endemic flora of the Peloponnese, a floristic region of Greece with high total- and endemic- species diversity. Even though only 12.5% of the endemic taxa have previously been documented as MAP, the use of indicators suggests 58.3% of the flora as of non-null MAP potential (Indicator I1), while 74.1% of the taxa obtained a non-null value of Study Interest Index (Indicator I2). The results suggest 25 taxa as of high MAP potential, whereas 24 taxa are emphasized as of high-priority for further studies. This is, to our knowledge, the first attempt to establish a systematic literature-based method to assess potentially significant edible, medicinal and/or aromatic taxa. This dataset contains: C0: The calculation of the four indices based on the formulas for the endemic flora of the Peloponnese. C1: The medicinal/aromatic properties of the endemic taxa and the corresponding references. C2: The medicinal/aromatic properties of the related taxa, the corresponding references, and the correspondances between endemics and related taxa. C3: The list of Herbal Medicinal related taxa with their properties. C4: The decription of the chemical compositions for the extracts of the endemics/relatives, with their correspondances. C5: The form used to test the indices, and the results of the test. Review...: The full bibliography related to the properties of the endemic and related taxa.

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