Launching the Project for Encouraging and Protecting Medicinal and Aromatic Plants at BAU El Bekaa Site

The Research Center for Environment and Development at Beirut Arab University, in cooperation with Green Hand, launched the Project for Encouraging and Protecting Medicinal and Aromatic Plants.                                           

  

The project fosters the cultivation of 30 kinds of aromatic herbs such as wild Thyme, Marjoram, Hyssop, Rosemary, Damask Rose, Saffron and others.                                                                             

The project is part of the Center’s efforts to protect
natural resources and benefit from local medicinal
and aromatic plants in Lebanon, which are also
becoming endangered due to random picking,
overgrazing and the lack of a national management strategy.

The project covers three phases and an area of 15,000 m2
of the Center’s lands in Bekaa. All of these herbs will first 
be cultivated in plots of 500 m2, utilizing 
sustainable agricultural methods that help plants grow
and preserve the environment. 

The project aims to preserve these endemic plants while researching the possibility of cultivating herbs non-native to Lebanon as alternative crops. The project also aims at studying and setting sustainable agricultural protocols for the cultivation of these herbs in Bekaa with the concerned parties active in this field. The study is conducted in the light of academic and applied scientific research.

The project further provides scientific and academic methods for the agricultural community of Bekaa to encourage the cultivation of these herbs as an essential economic resource in the development of rural communities and engaging rural women in their management.

The Research Center for Environment and Development, in cooperation with Green Hand, will convert the produce of this project into consumer, medicinal and pharmaceutical products, to study their components and characteristics under the supervision of researchers at the Faculty of Pharmacy, BAU. The resulting expertise will be transferred to local agricultural practices, with the aim to establish small and medium enterprises that help in the socio-economic development of the Bekaa community and surrounding rural areas.

The project is supervised by Dr. Safaa Baidoun, the Director of the Research Center for Environment and Development, Dr. Fouad Saad, Expert of Agricultural Affairs at BAU, and Mr.  Zaher Radwan, Director of Green Hand.