Ethnobotanical Diversity, Knowledge Transmission and Biocultural Conservation Among the Adi Communities of Arunachal Pradesh, India: A Critical Narrative Review

Abstract

Plant knowledge among the Adi communities of Arunachal Pradesh reaches into forest gathering, household meals, healthcare, ritual, and income. Published work, however, is scattered across small local surveys, so shared patterns are hard to identify. This narrative review brings together eight studies on Adi ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, food systems and material culture. The inventories they report range from 21 species used in vernacular architecture to 301 useful taxa in the Komkar-Adi landscape. Because the studies overlap and use different methods, these numbers cannot be added together. Food and medicinal uses often go together with cultural and economic ones, but claims of medicinal benefit rest on ethnographic accounts, not clinical tests. Future work should rely on voucher specimens and cross-village comparisons, measure how knowledge passes between generations, and keep conservation and benefit-sharing in community hands. Adi ethnobotany is best seen as a living biocultural system rather than a list of medicinal plants.