Cinchona Plantation in Darjeeling Hills:History and Extension

Man and plant relation is in vogue since existence of mankind. Historical accounts of medicinal plants to cure human diseases dates back to ancient period and man plant relationship is prehistoric. Infectious diseases are cosmopolitan in distribution but they are more prevalent in the tropical region due to favorable conditions for causal organism of diseases. One example of such a tropical disease is malaria which was considered as a killer disease since long time and during the War periods it was an alarming threat to the armies. Three actors have definite role to play for spread of the disease i.e. Plasmodium sp. (the causal organism), female anopheles mosquito (the vector and primary host) and human (the secondary host). A tree called kina kina in local language (later known as cinchona), whose bark dust was found to be effective to relieve fever of wife of viceroy of Peru in 1640 was an outbreak for search of drug against malarial fever. Then the plant was brought to Europe and in due course of time, it was brought in south India in 1858 and subsequently in 1863 some seed were sown the Darjeeling hills of West Bengal. The tree bark contained an alkaloid called quinine which was pharmacologically active to kill the malaria parasite. As the plant acclimatized well in the region near Mongpoo, plantations were extended in the various parts of the district due to demand of the febrifuge which now covers an area of 26000 acres. Due to discovery of synthetic drugs in a large quantity, as usual in all plant based medicine, quinine has lost its demand value as a result cinchona plantation is being diversified.