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Partnership brings together research
and popular wisdom
Elderly people develop activities coordinated by scientists
who work in the area of ​​medicinal plants

ANTONIO ROBERTO FAVA

Members of the Senior Citizens Group in a CPQBA seedling nursery: exchange of knowledge

Cagreement between the Center for Chemical, Biological and Agricultural Research (CPQBA) at Unicamp and the Community Action Center of the City of Paulínia (Caco), shows that the fusion of popular knowledge with academic science in the development of theoretical and practices regarding the cultivation of medicinal plants.

A project with this purpose began about three years ago, when the researchers decided to also rely on the experience and popular wisdom of people who form the Third Age Group and who, at least once a week, frequent CPQBA nurseries and fields. . Caco's main objective is for elderly people to improve their ability to develop skills and knowledge about the cultivation of medicinal plants. And, for this, there is no need for prior technical knowledge, just that the interested party enjoys the countryside and working with plants and the land.

“What CPQBA seeks with this work is to present the research activities it carries out, convey to interested parties the importance of identifying medicinal plants and, with seniors, exchange information about the use and application of species”, says the agricultural engineer Glyn Mara Figueira, project coordinator, who shares the tasks with biologist Benício Pereira. And the results obtained so far have been very good, due to the mutual cooperation between popular experience and science developed within the Center's research laboratories.

Popular information – Glyn explains that there have been times when her collaborators gave important information about plants, whose properties and applications went beyond those that the researcher knew. “It was new information, which we immediately registered in our database to be investigated more accurately”, she explains.

Project participants have a series of activities in the field, where plant seeds are collected, and in the nursery – in the Research Center itself – where they have contact with the stages of seedling production. The plants, after growing, are taken to the field.

Agricultural engineer Glyn Mara Figueira, project coordinator: encouraging results

“For us, this is very important because, in this whole process, we rescued the popular information that the oldest people used, who learned from their parents and grandparents about the use of a certain medicinal plant, and the way in which the herbal medicine originating from that plant is produced. ,” says Glyn. The people who form the group are also shown how research is carried out, based on popular information about a specific herb or plant, to scientifically confirm whether its use is viable for the production of medicine.

A good example of this entire process is the Cordia curassavica plant, better known by the name Erva-baleeira, Maria-milagrosa or Maria-preta. It is an herb with high healing power, widely used to treat bruises.
“Research carried out here at the Center is related to the cultivation and extraction of the active ingredient. It has been confirmed that Erva-baleeira also has anti-inflammatory substances that could be transformed into herbal medicine for bruises, rheumatism, arthritis or neuralgia, among other ailments”, explains the researcher.
Other studies are being developed by the Research Center with medicinal plants. Pennyroyal, a medicinal plant from the labiada family (Mentha pulegium L.) and guaco – for treating coughs – from the compound family (Mikania laevigata Sch. Bip. ex Baker), are two of the plants used in these lines of research at the Center .

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The legacy of the field

Every Friday, for at least two hours, retirees aged between 60 and 70 meet at the CPQBA nursery. Not everyone came from rural areas, but everyone, at least at some point in their lives, had some experience with the countryside. And now they want to recover some of that time that was left behind. In the CPQBA nursery, they handle around 350 plant species.

Dona Miriam dos Santos is 59 years old. She says that she has always liked plants, “although my knowledge about medicinal plants is a little different from the knowledge I am acquiring here”. Miriam reveals that she inherited certain knowledge about medicinal plants from her mother and grandmother. Some time later, she tried to pass it on to her grandchildren and other close relatives. “That's what I try to do here”, she says with a smile, as she manipulates a seedling in a tube so that the plant grows on its own.

Born in Bahia, Alaíde Evangelista Figueiredo, 60 years old, does not deny her knowledge about medicinal plants. “This knowledge I acquired in the backyard of my house, mainly the recipes for home remedies, which are useful for a lot of things,” he says. She handled a portion of Erva-baleeira, which is very popular, and says that today at the Center she learned that its scientific name is Cordia curassavica. “An excellent remedy for sprains and to also be used as an anti-inflammatory.”

Yochimitsu Shimabukuro, 65 years old, a retired ITA engineer, says that “plants are as 'human' as men: man has a life of his own and, as such, suffers the same losses and pain as a plant. This can be seen when we see a plant that has lost its leaves, its branches or has dried out. The same happens with men, who feel the same pain, the same anguish of getting older, when they are injured. Or he dies”.

 

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