International Journal of Research in Engineering and Applied Sciences

Medicinal plants, since times immemorial, have been used in virtually all cultures as a source of medicine. The wide spread use of herbal remedies and health-care preparations, as those described in ancient texts such as Vedas, Bible, obtained from commonly used traditional herbs and medicinal plants have been traced to occurrence of natural products with medicinal properties. Medicines from these plants are in great demand in developing world of primary health care, not because they are cheap but they are culturally acceptable. In recent decades Prosopis has become one of the most important tree genera in many tropical and subtropical regions of world. Prosopis cineraria, locally known as “Khejri”, has an important place in economy of Indian desert.

“Khejri” is the lifeline of desert. It yields excellent firewood and produces high-quality charcoal. Pods are a popular vegetable in human diet. The bark yields edible gums, is used locally in leather tanning. The flowers are valuable in honey production. Its plantation is used for sand dume stabilization, remediation of famine land and as shelterbelts. (Arya.etal, 1986;Gupta. R, 1988;Gupta.etal, 1998; Felker, 1998;Puri.etal, 2002).

Besides, all these uses of Prosopis cineraria, it is used as folk medicine for various ailments. The flowers are mixed with sugar and administered to prevent miscarriage. It works like an antidiabetic agent, if its flowers are used with its twig. The ashes are rubbed over the skin to remove hair. The bark, considered antihelminthic, antimicrobial (Rajvanshi, S. and Garg, V. 2007) refrigerant and tonic is used for treatment of asthma, bronchitis, dysentery, leucoderma, leprosy muscle tremors, piles, and wandering of mind. Leaf smoke is used to cure eye infection (ICFRE, 1993), but the fruit is said to be indigestible, including biliousness and destroys nails and hair. Its dry pods (“khokra”) help in preventing protein calorie malnutrition and iron calcium deficiency in blood. (Shalini, 1997; Toky, 1998; Meena and Sharma, 2000; Chandra, 2001;Bhatt 2003).