Medicinal uses of natural dye yielding plants of India

Of late, demand for natural dyes has increased worldwide due to awareness about their beneficial properties. Natural dyes obtained from plants have several applications in several industries, viz., textiles, cosmetics, pharmaceutical and paper industries. These natural dyes exist indifferent shades of colours and possess medicinal properties owing to the constituent various plant pigments and bioactive compounds. The present work highlights the use of dye yielding plants by the indigenous people as folk medicine for curing various illnesses in humans and animals. Altogether 150 dye yielding plants belonging to 62 families have been reportedly being used by people from different geographical regions of India. The paper aims at gathering indigenous knowledge on dye yielding plants and their medicinal uses in order to promote traditional and ethnic systems maintained by the indigenous people.