Recent achivements of the introduction and improvment of native medicinal plants in Iran

Iran is the country of different climates and rich genepool of different medicinal herbs. Both climate variation and available genetic resources, make possible the introduction and improvement of new plant varieties into agriculture. Artemisia dracunculus has been cultivated in different parts of Iran since unknown time. Satureja rechingeri is a wild endemic species growing in desert area of south west of Iran with annual rainfall of less than 250mm while, Solidago virgaurea and Equisetum arvence are native to north and northwest of Iran with more than 700 mm annual rainfall. Several experimets were conducted to introduce new varieties of these plants for economic and high quality plant material production in agricultural systems. Here some of the results are presented.