India, a megadiverse country with 2.4% of the world's land area, accounts for 7-8% of all recorded species, including over 45,000 species of flora and 91,000 species of fauna (IUCN, 2022). The country’s diverse physical features and climatic conditions have resulted in a variety of ecosystems such as forests, wetlands, grasslands, desert, coastal and marine ecosystems, which harbour and sustain high biodiversity and contribute to human well-being. Four of 36 globally identified biodiversity hotspots viz. eastern Himalaya, Indo-Burma, Western Ghats and Sri Lanka and the Sundaland are found in India. India having two realms, seven biomes, 10 biogeographic zones and 27 biogeographic provinces (Singh & Chaturvedi, 2017).
India has a forest cover of about 21.71% (7,13,789 km2) of the country’s total geographical area, and about 15.2 million hectares of wetlands (Wetland of India Portal, 2022) and an area of about 4,992 km2 of Mangroves (FSI, 2021). The desert ecosystem covers about 2% of the total landmass (spreads over the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana) and the cold desert lies in Ladakh (Jammu & Kashmir) and in Lahaul-Spiti of Himachal Pradesh, covering an area of about 1,09,990 km2.
Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state, the third largest state in terms of economy, and the fourth largest state of India in terms of area. It is situated in the Gangetic plains of north India and is locked by Nepal and Uttarakhand in north, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in south, Bihar and Jharkhand in east, and Delhi, Haryana and Rajasthan in west. Presently, Uttar Pradesh has one national park, 24 wildlife sanctuaries and 10 Ramsar sites, with Bakhira Wildlife Sanctuary in Sant Kabir Nagar district as the latest addition in 2022. The forests of Uttar Pradesh are categorized under six major types viz. tropical sal forest, tropical deciduous forest, tropical teak forest, tropical seasonal swamp forest, ravine thorn forest and grasslands (Champion and Seth, 1968).
The plant diversity of Uttar Pradesh has been studied by several workers from time to time. Among the pioneer works, probably Munro (1844) published the first Flora for the state on the plants of Agra district, followed by ‘Flora of Upper Gangetic Plains’ by Duthie (1906) including plants of sub-Himalayan to Shiwalik ranges. Since then, several workers have published district floras, forest floras, new records, systematic documentation, checklists, new species etc. from Uttar Pradesh. Later, Khanna et al. (1999) prepared a checklist of dicots of Uttar Pradesh. However, it also included the plants of Uttarakhand. Subsequently, Srivastava (2004) reported 2711 angiosperms under 182 families and 1088 genera and Kishor (2011) enumerated the list of 410 tree species belonging to 227 genera under 66 families from Uttar Pradesh Saini et al. (2010) provided a list of 751 species of aquatic and semi-aquatic angiosperms and vascular cryptogams in wetlands of eastern Uttar Pradesh. Khanna (2017) published a checklist of angiosperms of Uttar Pradesh including 2,607 species in 234 genera under 34 families. Recently, Singh et al. (2016, 2021) reported the occurance of 805 species in 355 genera under 81 families in the first part of ‘Flora of Uttar Pradesh’ and 897 species in 432 genera under 59 families in the second part. As per the recent published records, the floristic diversity of the state is represented by 2,817 species under 1,200 genera belonging to 176 families including 518 taxa of cultivated plants (ENVIS BSI, 2021). Out of which, six plant species are endemic to the state while 53 species have been listed as threatened in the wild (Singh et al., 2016). The most dominant families in terms of number of taxa are Fabaceae (327 spp.), Poaceae (293 spp.), Asteraceae (169 spp.), Cyperaceae (113 spp.) and Acanthaceae (105 spp) (ENVIS BSI, 2021).
Consistently growing demand of land to fulfil the need of day-by-day increasing human population, land use change, encroachment, conversion of wet lands, industrialization, excessive grazing, over-exploitation, invasive species, forest fires, storms, floods are some of the important factors responsible for the loss of forest cover as well as posing as a threat to the phytodiversity. Many wild edible plants like Grewia asiatica L., Limonia acidissima L., Manilkara hexandra (Roxb.) Dubard, and plants with medicinal value like Kigelia africana (Lam.) Benth., Gloriosa superba L., Rauvolfia serpentina (L.) Benth. ex Kurz., Oroxylum indicum (L.) Kurz. etc. are slowly disappearing from the wild due to over-exploitation (Singh et al., 2016). Therefore, targeted conservation efforts are needed to protect the diminishing phytodiversity of the state.
The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 of India provides for strong institutional mechanism in order to implement its obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Accordinglya three-tier institutional mechanism was established at national, state and local level to promote conservation and sustainable utilization of biodiversity, and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of bio-resources and associated traditional knowledge. Strong and effective institutional mechanism is essential to fulfill the obligation to provide for conservation of biological diversity.The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, a major scientific organization of the country also has its presence in the state with four research institutes namely CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute (CSIR-CDRI), CSIR-Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CSIR-CIMAP), CSIR-Indian Institute of Toxicology Research (CSIR-IITR) and CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute (CSIR-NBRI), all situated in the state capital Lucknow.
