By Mayabhushan Nagvenkar
Panaji, Nov 5 (IANS) You can turn milk into yogurt within 10 minutes or pump toxins out of your cattle. You just need to know which plant to use, says S.V. Kalmath, an expert on the biodiversity of the Western Ghats.

Kalmath, who heads the NGO Ganayogi Panchakshara Gavai Seva Sanstha — in Karnataka’s Bidar district — has prepared a people’s biodiversity register (PBDR) that gives a glimpse of the riches contained in forests that run parallel to India’s western coast.

Speaking at the eighth global conference on environmental education that started here Wednesday, Kalmath said: “Documentation of traditional knowledge (TK) regarding local medicines, environment, natural resources and bio-resources in due consultation with the people were the objectives of the PBDR.”

Using Wadgaon village in Bidar as a pilot project area, Kalmath came to know about the raw flakes of a natural latex that can turn fresh milk into yogurt in 10 minutes and about tender jowar shoots which can pump toxins out of the body.

“Wadgaon is a small village of 847 acres with a population of 6,799, but a mere listing of the information there has thrown up knowledge previously unrecorded and virtually unheard of,” he said.

A small community of shepherds in Wadgaon has been putting a natural latex-generating tree to almost magical use for generations.

“They scrape a few flakes of latex from the tree and add it to fresh milk. The milk converts into curd in a matter of 10 minutes, a process which generally takes several hours,” Kalmath said, adding that this bit of traditional knowledge was virtually unknown outside the shepherd community in Wadgaon.

Then there’s the case of naturally treated tender jowar shoots, which is fed to cattle in Wadgaon in case they get food poisoning. “On being fed the treated jowar shoot, cattle pass out the poisonous toxins through excretion and urine,” he said.

While admitting the need to put these traditional remedies and discoveries to scientific test, Kalmath said that the PBDR was not about listing startling new information alone.

“It records the area’s landscape, waterscape, lifescape, other than traditional knowledge. A PBDR also helps protect the bio-resources from being bio-smuggled to other countries,” he said, adding that such a record gives the local people the right to get an equal share from the benefit accrued from the natural resources of the region they live in.