Indigenous knowledge on medicinal plants used by local villagers associated with Sadasivakona-A sacred grove of Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh, India

BACKGROUND: The local villagers residing at Sadasivakona sacred grove are associated with medicinal plants and utilize many medicinal plants to cure ailments. Because of this, the present study was intended to document the traditional uses of medicinal plants used by local villagers residing at Sadasivakona-a sacred grove of Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh, India. METHODS: The documentation of indigenous knowledge on medicinal plants used by local villagers of Sadasivakona sacred grove was carried out with a structured questionnaire. The documentation of indigenous knowledge was made by conducting several tours and personal interviews with their local dialect from 2019 to 2020. RESULTS: Sixty-seven potential medicinal plants belonging to 59 genera and 36 families were documented from Sadasivakona-a sacred grove of Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh, India. For the preparation of medicine, leaves (49%) among the plant parts, paste (36%) among the form of medicine, internal administration (53%) among the intake of medicine, and cough (16%) among the ailment treatment were noticed as the highest percentages. Altogether, 41 types of ailments were successfully documented from the herbal practitioners of Sadasivakona sacred grove. CONCLUSIONS: There is no documentation on the indigenous knowledge of local villagers of Sadasivakona sacred grove so far. Hence the present study focuses on the documentation of perishing knowledge of this sacred grove. Among the documented plants, the therapeutic uses of 28 medicinal plants were matched with Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical database and 10 medicinal plants with Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions database. The documented information may be helpful to the pharmaceutical industries in the preparation of novel drugs.