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ways for combining these contrary two activities, without being in conflict, is
the cultivation of species.
During the last 20-year period, the author has commenced a systematically
developed research to restore endangered and overexploited plants by reproduction
into agriculture. This is a very difficult complicated process, due to the
specificity of various species with ultimate extinction, specific ecological and
biological requirements for their development and problems in the generative
mechanisms.
The study of plant breeding into cultivation takes the following steps:
• Finding the habitats of the species distributed in Bulgaria and determining
the optimum ecological conditions for their sustainable growth in nature;
• Investigating their biological and phytochemical characteristics and collecting
propagation material from the best populations.
• Building a collection of the most suitable material under cultural conditions.
• Bringing the most adapted higher yield forms with uniform high
concentration of the active constituents into cultivation;
• Making sustainable technologies for plant breeding and cultivation into
the agriculture.
• Determining a quality control with regards to successful development of
the species.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The author has carried out the investigation of 14 medicinal plants, within
the period from 1984 to 2002 in natural habitats of the species and under
controled conditions. The ecological requirements of the populations have
been determined. Seeds and vegetative material have been collected in the
species’populations in the country. They have been reproduced at two experimental
bases of the Institute of Botany (the village of Gorni Lozen, Sofia district,
457 m a. s. 1. and in the Beglika Forestry Enterprise in the Western Rhodopes,
1500 m a. s. 1.).
A complex of contemporary methods has been used during the studies of
ecological and biological peculiarities of medicinal plants - inventarization,
routing and stationary methods, methods of the model speciments, statistical,
Bulgarian State Standards, GAP, etc. The investigation of seeds has been
performed in accordance with International Seed Testing Association (ISTA).
The qualitative and quantitative composition of secondary metabolites
(flavonoids, iridoids, alkaloids, terpenoids, steroids, etc.) has been established
by pharmacopoeian methods, densitometric analysis, column chromatography,
TLC, spectroscopy, etc.
Subject to the authors’ review are some of the endangered medicinal
plants:
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Электронная Научная СельскоХозяйственная Библиотека