ETHNOBOTANICAL STUDY OF MEDICINAL AND WILD EDIBLE PLANTS IN DIRE DISTRICT, BORANA ZONE, OROMIA REGION, ETHIOPIA

There is a potential of medicinal and wild edible plants (WEP) species lore in the Dire district of Borana Zone, which was unexplored for scientific investigation, conservation and sustainable utilization. Therefore, this ethnobotanical study was conducted to explore these potential biodiversity resources in the study area. A total of 136 respondents were selected to collect ethnobotanical data on medicinal and WEP species from four sampled Kebele’s locally called Areda (the smallest administrative structure in Oromia). Interview, focus group discussion (FGD), and guided field walks were conducted with 136 respondents. Informant consensus factor (ICF), preference ranking, paired comparison and direct matrix ranking were calculated. A total of 54 traditional medicinal and 25 wild edible plant species were collected from the study area. About 89.09% species were collected from wild vegetation and 3.64% species from home gardens and 7.27% species were common in both wild and home ga rdens. All edible plants were collected from the wild habitat. The most frequently used medicinal plant parts were roots (43.6%), followed by leaves (23.6%), barks (10.9%), and (10.9%) of stems. The dominant wild edible plant’s part used were fruit (44.83%), root (20.69%), and tuber (13.79%). Among the disease categories respiratory tract problems had higher ICF value of 0.95. Direct matrix ranking showed Vachellia bussei and Grewia villosa as the most utilized species by the community. The recurrent drought aggravated by climate change was the major threat to medicinal and WEP species in the study area followed by habitat destruction due to agricultural expansion. This study encouraged the need for the conservation of such valuable plant species and associated ethnomedicinal knowledge in such drought prone areas to enhance the biodiversity specially to conserve drought-resistant WEP species. Moreover, such documentation of comprehensive ethnomedicinal knowledge is valuable and needs to be scaled-up so that it could be followed up with pharmacological and nutritional analyses in order to give scientific ground to the ethnobotanical knowledge