Ethnobotanical study of medicinal plants from West Azerbaijan, Northwestern Iran


 Background

This study has identified the applications and local (Azari) and persian names of wild and cultivated plants collected for medical purposes by Azerian people of West Azerbaijan region in the Province of West Aerbaijan, Iran. The aim of this study is to collect information from local population concerning the use of medicinal plants of Khoy and determine the relative importance of the species including use value of species and the informant consensus factor (ICF) were surveyed and calculated in relation to medicinal plant use.
Methods

A field study had been carried out for a period of approximately 2 years (2014–2015). A questionnaire was administered to the local people, through face-to-face interviews. Demographic characteristics of participants, names of the local plants, their utilized parts and preparation methods were asked. The plant species were collected as herbarium specimen. The collected data were used to calculate the ICF and the plant use values. 82 Plants were found to be used for medical purposes in study area.
Results

The results showed that the highest use value were recorded for the species Thymus kotschyanus Boiss. exhibited maximum use value (0.58), while the highest ICF was cited for Cold, flu, fever (0.61).
Conclusions

The results of this research showed that in the studied area the folk medicinal plants are still applied and evaluation of pharmacological activity for the indigenous medicinal plants is recommended.


Introduction
In spite of great progress in modern pharmacology and introduction of several new synthetic medicines, plants and their natural derivatives are widely used for various pharmacological purposes by the people in different regions1-6. These consumptions are due to the presence of different phytochemicals, which makes plants a major source of natural products for various medicinal applications. However, for more than 1000 years' people have used plants based on mouth to mouth information from past generations, without any detailed information regarding their phytochemical constituents (Hayta et al., 2014). Uncontrolled harvest of medicinal plants by local people has increased the risk of extinction of many species and subsequently the loss of local knowledge including instructions of those plants. Documentation of the indigenous knowledge through ethnobotanical studies is important for the conservation and utilization of biological resources. Therefore, establishing the local names and the indigenous uses of plants will be bene cial (Bagcı, 2000). In general, ethnobotany is the scienti c investigations of plants that are used in indigenous culture for food, medicine, rituals, building, household implements, rewood, pesticides, clothing, shelter and other purposes (Ugulu, 2011). By revealing and recording the hidden folk medicinal uses of local plants, ethnobotany has become an important part of our world. Ethnobotany surveys include interviewing local people, using available data in the literature and the folklore of each region. Iran has admirable past regarding traditional medicines, especially medicinal Plant-based medicines (Naghibi et al., 2005). Historical evidence proves the fact that Iran is the most ancient civilization in using medicinal plants. Iran with 8000 plants species and 1727 endemic species, is one of the ten important sources of speciation in the world (Youso , 2007). Ethnobotany surveys were conducted in parts of the country (Ghorbani, 2005 . North west of Iran has a rich ora, due to its diverse climates and high number of ecological zones. This diversity in ora provides a rich source of medicinal plants, which has been utilized by Azerian people from the far past. The number of studies that have been undertaken to document and preserve medicinal plant knowledge in west Azerbaijan is few especially in Khoy region. For this purpose, we just found Study of West Azerbaijan medicinal plants that was conducted by Miraldi et al (2000). But they didn't evaluate the medicinal plants that grow in Khoy region and It's necessary to document biodiversity of medicinal plants that are used in folk medicinine in the study area. Khoy city possesses rich sources of different herbs. People have a ready access to them, especially in rural areas. Main objective of the current study therefore has been to compile and document information on the applications of plants by the people and the therapies offered by conventional healers in this area.

Methodology Study area
Khoy is located north-west of Iran, West Azerbaijan province lying at 38°33′01″N 44°57′08″E, with an average altitude 1139 m above sea level. It is nicknamed as the Sun ower city of Iran. In the past years, Khoy was the gateway of the Parthian Empire in the Northwest. Koppen-Geiger climate classi cation system classi es its climate as cold semi-arid. Qotur river which passes through the city, originates from high altitude of Turkish border. All around the region is surrounded by mountains like Iran's other western highlands. This area is along Mount Ararat (Agri Dagh). The city is located in the vicinity of mountains such as Chelekhaneh (north) Mount, Avrin Mount (southeast) and Aladagh mountain range in west of the city. It shares international border with Turkey (Van) at west. District Chaypare is located at north, Salmas at south and district Marand is allocated at west of Khoy. It is divided to four counties: Central District Interviews with local people People Interviews were done during the busy hours of the known areas -visited by the citizens of West Azerbaijan and its villages. A questionnaire was administered to the local people, through face-to-face interviews. During the interviews, the demographic characteristics of the study participants, local names, utilized parts and preparation methods of the plants were recorded. The people who participated in the study were requested to indicate the wild plants they used.

Plant Materials
The eld study was carried out over a period of approximately 2 years (2014)(2015). During this period, information about the medicinal use of 72 wild and 20 cultivated plants were collected. The plants were pressed in the eld and prepared for identi cation. Plants were identi ed using the standard text, Flora Iranica (Rechinger, 1965(Rechinger, -2008 and Flora of Turkey and the East Aegean Islands (Davis, 1965(Davis, -1985Davis et al., 1988) and were compared with the specimens in Tabriz University Herbarium. The names of plant families were listed in alphabetic order.

Data analysis
The data was analyzed through different quantitative techniques. for this purpose, different approaches are considered for quantitative as well as qualitative analysis of ethnobotanical data. These approaches depend on the objectives of researcher, nature of the study and aim at objective evaluation of the reliability of the conclusions based on the data (Hoft et al., 1999). The indigenous medicinal information of plant species was analyzed using two different techniques: use value (UV) and informant consensus factor (ICF).

Informants consensus factor (ICF)
The importance of each species was represented by using different indices including, relative frequency of citation (FC), Informants consensus factor (ICF), and cultural importance index (CI). Frequency of citation (FC) is de ned as the number of informants who refer to a useful species. Informants consensus factor (ICF) index was used to determine the uniformity of the recorded information. At rst the aliments were categorized and then all the citations were located into the related categories that each plant was claimed to affect. This index was calculated by using following formula: Where N ur and N t denote the number of use report in each use category and number of taxa taken as medicine, respectively. The higher the value of the ICF, the more informants agree on the use of the species in the use-category.

Use-value (UV)
The UV, a quantitative method to determine the relative importance of indigenous plant species was calculated using the following formula; Where, UV represents the use value of a species; Ui represents the number of uses mentioned by each informant for a given species; n is the total number of informants interviewed for a given species (Phillips and Gentry., 1993).

Results And Discussion
Demographic characteristics of study participants Demographic characteristics of the respondents were determined and recorded through face to-face interviews. 55.8% of participants of surveyed people who had knowledge of plants were male and the rest were female. We interviewed 120 persons who are over the age of 25. All females who use these plants are house-wives whereas 41.5% of males are farmers, and 29.2% of them are unemployed while others have various occupations. Demographical characteristics of interviewees according to the results, we obtained in the research, are presented in Table 1.   Most frequently used parts are aerial parts (32%), followed by leaves (20%), Seeds (13%), and Fruits (12%) (Figure.  Decoctions were the second common method that includes boiling a speci c part of plant in water until it reaches its half the initial volume. Among preparation methods, those which lead to an orally consumable products are preferred (Mood, 2008;Brandao et al., 2012;Sadeghi et al., 2014). It was observed that native people of this region used endogenous plants after drying. This method is preferred because they can store these dried medicinal plants in a house room and use it for all year round, when they need. In West Azerbaijan, the custom of preparing distillates at home is a widespread tradition named "Araghgiri" that produce aromatic water with homemade instruments named "Neygazan". For example, distillate obtained from Mentha, used to treat abdominal pains and also used as carminative often. The most of the people in Khoy and neighboring area use aromatic water of Rosa damascena as "Golab" to treat stomachache, as sedative burns treatment and Natural Brightening Cleanser. In addition, it is used as avor. For example, in 'Doogh' and 'Fereni' as traditional drink and food respectively and the essential oil of Rosa damascena is used in Perfumery. Golab has an important role especially in funeral of Azerian people. They use it for Wash graves and cooking "Halva" which is a traditional pastry for mourning ceremony. Different approaches used for medicinal preparations of plants are presented in Table 2. The consumption of plants in Infusion form is the most frequently used way (40 Species), followed by Decoction (39 Species), Raw (20 Species), and Powder (8 Species) (Fig. 4).
Sadat-Hosseini et al. 11 have carried out ethno-botanical studies in the south of Kerman Province. They have collected data from the native people. Majority of the are used as decoction followed by liniment, and infusion. As in our ndings, most of the herbal preparations are consumed orally, whereas in a few cases Top mode is used. The oral mode of application is the most preferred form of herbal preparations among different ethical groups of Iran. However, according to Vijayakumar et al. most plant preparations are used in the form of paste (32%), followed by powder (22%), decoction and juice (20%). Similarly, oral use too is the most frequently applied mode, followed by topical use. A perusal of the studies published reveals big differences between various cultures, in terms of mode of herbal preparations and application ways, but most are applied orally.

Data analysis (ICF and UV calculations)
The use of medicinal plants as conventional and modern drugs shows that they are acceptable. There may be some plants which are currently not used for medicinal purposes but may actually have medicinal effects (Kaya, 2006). In order to classify major health problems of interviewees, ailments are categorized in to different group. The reported ailments were grouped into 11 categories based on the information gathered from the interviewee. Native people of Khoy use plants for medical purposes mostly for treatment of Gastro-intestinal diseases (e.g. gastric pains, stomach disorders, as carminative, constipation, diarrhea, hemorrhoids and laxatives and cases), cold, u and fever (60 citations ), Diabetes (32 citations ), Skin diseases (28 citations), Nervous system, sedative (20 citations ), Cardiovascular disease (16 citations ), Diuretic (14 citations ), Infections (13 citations ), Rheumatic pain (12 citations ), Respiratory/throat diseases and Cancer (6 citations) (Fig. 5).
Helichrysum arenarium (L.), Lepidium draba L., Mentha longifolia (L.) Huds., Thymus kotschyanus Boiss., Alcea kurdica, etc were reported to be among the plant remedies concerned for treating cold, u and fever which had the highest ICF score (0.61  (Table 3). They expressed that Gundelia tournefortii could be an appropriate adjunctive medicinal plant to help reducing the major risk factors of CAD like cholesterol, LDL-c and BMI.
In addition, local people of Khoy use an expensive tru e, named "Donbalan" widely to use as antiin ammation, antioxidant and tonic. They believe that tru es, found in this region, are important source of protein and they use it for their health. White tru es, Terfezia boudieri Chatin. are found in Khoy and neighbouring area. It is one of seasonal temporary jobs to collect this kind of tru es for farmers which earn a proper income in some years. It's used to treat gastric cancer, hepatitis A, B, C, arthritis, bronchitis, asthma, stomach ulcers, blood pressure and cholesterol. Plant parts used for the treatment of various illnesses include aerial parts, leaves, stems, roots, bark, milky latex, oil seeds, owers, and fruits. Aerial parts were the most plant part (34), followed by fruit and seed (24), leaves (21), ower (9), latex (4) and root, rhizome, bulb (9) and a style respectively. These plants are used for the treatment of gastro-intestinal diseases, cardiovascular problems, diabetes, and skin diseases, cold and respiratory tract problem etc.
Relative importance value of plant species and informant consensus factor (ICF) for plants were calculated. The ICF values were found between 0.61 and 0.23. Diseases with high ICF values according to reported disorders are cold, diabetes and gastrointestinal diseases. We perceived that these plants are used in different parts of the world for the treatment of the same or similar diseases. Some plants that mentioned in this paper, may be edible or have another application.    Mode of preparations and their percentages.

Figure 5
Percentage of species and citation in each use category.

Figure 6
Medicinal plants with the most use