MEDICINAL PLANTS HIGHLY ADULTERATED AND SUBSTITUTED IN THE TELANGANA STATE, INDIA

Post covid-19, across the globemedicinal plants are targeted for large scale cultivation, introduction, phytochemical screening, pharmacognostical studies and for discovery of various drugs in traditional and modern system of medicines.In the urgency,with the demand and shortage of raw material leads to the adulterating and substituting many of the medicinal plants. Adulteration and substations are not only with shortage of raw material also with wrong taxonomic identity of the species and identity confusion with same local, vernacular and common names for the different species.While exploring the medicinal plant wealth of Telangana State, we have noticed some of the medicinal plants which are similar in morphology and with has same local and common names highly substituted and adulterated are discussed in detail in the present paper.