Question

Which of the following is an Indian medicinal plant?
(a)Oryza sativa
(b)Solanum melongena
(c)Rauwolfia serpentina
(d)Saccharum officinarum

Answer 1

Hint: The medicinal plant that belongs to India contains psychoactive compounds such as reserpine, rescinnamine, and deserpidine, and various other 50 alkaloid drugs. This plant has been used for safe and effective treatment of hypertension.

Complete answer:
 The plant that is an Indian medicinal plant is the Rauwolfia serpentina which is also known as the Indian snakeroot or sarpagandha. It is a species of flowering plant in the milkweed family of Apocynaceae. This plant is native to the Indian subcontinent and East Asia (from India to Indonesia). This plant contains various bioactive chemicals like reserpine, ajmaline, deserpidine, rescinnamine, serpentine used to treat various diseases. The most significant is the chemical reserpine which is used to treat systolic hypertension and mental disorders like schizophrenia.

Additional Information: Let us look at the other plants mentioned in the options.
Oryza sativa : This plant is commonly known as Asian rice and is a major crop of Asia especially regions of southern, eastern, and South-East Asia. It is a type of grass that consists of 12 chromosomes and is famous for being easy to genetically modify and thus is a model organism for cereal biology.
Solanum melongena: This plant is known as eggplant, aubergine, or brinjal and belongs to the nightshade family Solanaceae. This plant is grown worldwide for its edible fruit which is purple, spongy, and absorbent in nature. The brinjal fruit is a type of berry.
Saccharum officinarum : It is a large, strong-growing species of sugarcane which is a type of grass that produces sucrose in its stalks and stores the sugar in its internodes.
So, the correct option is ‘Rauwolfia serpentina ’.

Note: -Another species known as Rauwolfia vomitoria shows variation among its different plants in terms of the potency and concentration of the active chemical reserpine.
-Such a high diversity at the genetic level over its distributional range is known as genetic diversity.
-Genetic diversity is also seen in the 50,000 genetically different strains of rice in India.