To Confirm The Plant of Indonesian Origin

The Technology Research and Assessment Agency (BPPT) has begun a research on the DNA fingerprint of ginger (curcuma zanthorrhiza) to ascertain that the plant is of Indonesian origin, a BPPT official has said.
"There have been many countries claiming ginger as part of their national heritage and makes it their state icon just like Korea does with ginseng," BPPT Medical Pharmaceutical Technology Center director, Rifatul Widjhati said in a talk-show on herbal medicine, here, on Wednesday.
Widjhati said if Indonesia could not prove that the plant which is called temulawak in bahasa as an Indonesian indigenous plant, then there would be big economic loss in the future in particular with regard to herbal medicines and the jamu, the herb-based Indonesian traditional medicine.
"Take Korea as an example, despite the country produces only up to 30 percent of the world production of ginseng, but the iconic name is already linked to Korea. Thus, the world can only trust ginseng which is produced by Korea as the real one," she said.
Widjhati said that temulawak is one of the world’s most important ingredients for herbal medicines where up to 80 percent of the world’s traditional and herbal medicines contain temulawak.
The significance of temulawak, she said, lies with its active compounds contents and its property as immunity system for human body, a cure for hepatitis and menstruation for women.


Speaking in the same event, BPPT Bio-Technology Assessment Division Bambang Marwoto said the research done on temulawak at BPPT was started by stocktaking on the plant and characterizing it by its phenotive contents and through its genotyping.
"Knowledge on the genetic variability side is a precondition to study the evolutionary history of a species and on the enrichment program and genetic source conservation of the plant," Marwoto said, adding that this is the way to stockpile information for the database on temulawak properties.
By doing so, he stressed it will be Indonesia that in the possession of the unique information of the cultivar, or a cultivated variety of a plant that has been deliberately selected for its desirable haracteristics. This way would close the claims from other countries on the indigenousness of the plant.
"The DNA fingerprint is a kind of barcode for Indonesian local plants," he said. There are more than 30,000 species of tropical plants in Indonesia, of which some 7,000 species have their medicinal properties. However, Indonesia currently accounts only 0.2 percent of the world’s herbal medicines.