The Western Himalayas are home to some of Asia's most rare and valuable medicinal herb species. Unfortunately though, due to the huge demand for these herbs, many species are being threatened by over-harvesting. Some herbs, which were once common, are becoming very difficult to find. Others have almost disappeared altogether.

Cultivation is one way of producing a sustainable supply of raw material for the herbal industry. Few of the endangered Himalayan herbs have been successfully cultivated on a commercial scale though; most species need to be grown at high altitudes and take several years to mature. They fetch relatively low prices in the market and require a lot of time and investment to establish.

The aim of our cultivation project is to transform cultivation of endangered herb species into a profitable enterprise. If planned and managed properly we believe cultivation can provide a valuable source of income to farmers living in remote villages, it can produce high quality raw material for the herbal industry and can help reduce pressure on the plants growing in the wild.

There are many challenges though. The fact that it takes three years to grow most of these plants is in itself a major barrier for most farmers, who do not have financial capacity to wait that long for a return. For those who do succeed further challenges await in the form of government bureaucracy required for legally trading endangered herbs. Species listed under CITES (the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species) can only be exported with a CITES export permit, which can be a challenging project in itself.

After seven years of trials in 2009 we successfully completed our first harvest of cultivated Kutki (Picrorhiza kurroa). We are now preparing for a much larger harvest in 2010 and are focusing our efforts on developing larger-scale post-harvest processing systems. Once we are able to demonstrate that cultivation of species such as Kutki can be profitable we aim to set up a supportive network to help other farmers adopt the same model. Biolaya's role will then be to provide guidance on cultivation methods and post-harvest processing, link the farmers with premium markets and help them navigate through the CITES documentation.

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