The Need, Impact and Importance of Medicinal Plants and Micro-organisms

In one line

Why medicinal plants and micro-organisms matter, what taking them does, and how that is joined to the protection of wild life.

MU set this as the first question on the 2026 paper, joined to the protection of wild life. This chapter answers the joined question.

In exam wording: the need for medicinal plants and micro-organisms arises because a large part of the world's medicine is derived from them and because the Indian systems of medicine recognised by Chapter IVA of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940 depend on them; their impact is that demand for a compound produces demand for the plant or the organism that yields it, and where the source is wild the demand is met by extraction from habitat; their importance in law is recognised by the Biological Diversity Act 2002, whose long title states the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the use of biological resources, knowledge and matters connected therewith; and the connection with the protection of wild life is that the same habitat holds both, so that sections 18, 29, 35 and 38 of the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972, which protect places and species of animals, are also the operative protection for most wild medicinal plants, since Chapter IIIA reaches only a specified plant listed in Schedule III.

The need

Medicine comes from organisms. The plant kingdom and the microbial world are the source of a very large part of the pharmacopoeia, and the classical Indian systems are built entirely on plant, mineral and animal material.

The statutory recognition. Chapter IVA of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940 regulates Ayurvedic, Siddha and Unani drugs, and section 3(a) defines such a drug by reference to the formulae described in the authoritative books specified in the First Schedule to that Act. Section 2(ea) of the Biological Diversity Act 2002 then defines codified traditional knowledge as knowledge derived from those same books.

Micro-organisms specifically. Section 2(c) of the Act of 2002 includes micro-organisms within biological resources. Section 3(j) of the Patents Act 1970 excludes plants and animals in whole or any part thereof from patentability other than micro-organisms, so a micro-organism is patentable subject matter in India where a plant is not. That single exception is why questions about micro-organisms are asked separately.

And the Budapest system. A micro-organism cannot be described on paper in a way that enables another person to work the invention, so patent law requires deposit. That is the practical reason section 6 of the Act of 2002 speaks of biological resources including those deposited in repositories outside India.