Uso de plantas medicinales y conocimientos ancestrales en las comunidades rurales de la provincia de Cañar, Ecuador

Abstract

In rural areas of the Cañar province, there are numerous native and introduced plants for therapeutic use, which have been little known and little accessible in the population. The native inhabitants have been using these since ancient times, benefiting from the curative properties for the prevention and treatment of multiple diseases and energy healing. In this study, the objective was to locate and map plants of therapeutic use of great importance in public health. For the same, GPS and Mobile Topographer were used for the annotation of the approximate location. With the data, georeferencing was performed using the ArcGis 10.5 software. Additionally, the R software was used for the correlation between altitude and location of the plants. Likewise, the coordinates and landast 8 images were used for soil and vegetation analysis in the study area using ArcGis 10.5. Therefore, 87 plants with compromising therapeutic potentials, useful in traditional medicine of Cañar, have been located and described, and it is suggested to conserve, preserve, propagate, and investigate prophylactic doses.