IRAQI JOURNAL OF DESERT STUDIES

Abstract

Plants have been exploited a source of medicines throughout human history and in all cultures. Scientific progress has allowed us to identify a minor fraction of the active compounds and their modes of action. Subsequently, it has greatly contributed to the development of modern medicines. Though, there is no suspicion that the biological information of how to synthesize the extremely complex bio-active compounds is involved within genome of medicinal plants. In the genomic era, medicinal plants are not represented only a source of chemical constituents, possessing acquired a new interest, but also serve as a source of genes included in formation of active principles. Thus, it represents as joint duty not only to derive information from these plants and to exploit this information wisely, but also to preserve them for future generations. Therefore, hence some highlights are provided on some thoughts that dealt with traditional methods of plant breeding applied on medicinal and aromatic plants thereby other thoughts are extracted supplemented with references to elucidate the multifaceted aspects for medicinal purposes.furthermore, it was referred to some early selection methods using recent statistical techniques as GGE Biplot, AMMI Biplot and ternary plot.