De Boer Lab

Ethnobotany, Barcoding, Systematics

Plant-based repellents as alternatives to synthetic products

Phylogeny and biogeography of Trichosanthes (Cucurbitaceae)

Molecular barcoding of medicinal plants in trade

Postpartum medicinal plant use

Medicinal plants have a significant role during pregnancy, birth and postpartum care in many rural areas of the world. Plants used in women’s health related conditions such as female fertility, amenorrhea, menorrhagia, birth control, pregnancy, birth (parturition), postpartum (puerperium) and lactation, including infant care. Pregnancy, parturition and the puerperium are not without risk to the mother and infant. Infant mortality (deaths per 1000 live births) and maternal mortality (maternal deaths per 100 000 live births) rates in many developing countries are respectively 10 and 100-fold those for Sweden.

The postpartum period is important in many Southeast Asian cultures, and can include steam sauna and bathing, mother roasting, dietary proscriptions and consumption of medicinal plant decoctions. Mother roasting is culturally related to steam bath, but differs in that the convalescent individual lies on a bed placed above a brazier with charcoal embers on which aromatic plants are laid, thus enabling the essential oils to vaporize. In our research with the Brou, Saek and Kry we found that all informants observed mother roasting (de Boer & Lamxay 2009), except the Kry Thae (Lamxay et al. 2011).

This research is relevant for culturally appropriate integration of modern healthcare and traditional postpartum recovery practices among ethnic minorities in Lao PDR. Large populations in rural Lao PDR live far from modern healthcare facilities, and rely on traditional practices and medicinal plants as their primary source of healthcare, and these practices are essential in their perception of postpartum recovery. These practices conflict with modern perceptions of antenatal care and postpartum recovery, and are marginalized or discouraged by efforts to introduce modern healthcare as health care workers are concerned about dietary intake and hygiene. The importance of these practices can be illustrated by data from villages on the outskirts of the capital Vientiane, where prevalence of traditional postpartum practices was found to be: mother roasting (97 % of informants observed this after childbirth), herbal tea as sole beverage during postpartum confinement (95 %), and dietary proscriptions (90 %) (Barennes et al. 2009).

This data shows that these practices are deeply ingrained in Lao society, and that modern perinatal care cannot replace them. An antagonist approach to introducing modern healthcare aimed at replacement of traditional practices has not yielded the intended outcome. Instead it created a parallel system of healthcare, where communication is discouraged by each system’s negative perception of the other. Rural areas where modern healthcare is not widely available could serve as exemplary cases of culturally sensitive integration of modern and traditional perinatal care benefitting local populations by reduced infant and maternal mortality, improved nutrient and dietary intake by newborns, infant, and convalescent mothers, and improved hygiene to reduce septicemia and other infections.

This research is a collaboration between Systematic Biology, Uppsala University and the National University of Laos, funded largely by Sida-SAREC. The main partners in this collaboration are: Vichith Lamxay, Chanda Vongsombath and Hugo de Boer.

Publications

Traditional Lao plant repellents

A key objective is to find inexpensive and accessible alternatives to synthetic repellents and pesticides for the impregnation of bed nets and for topical application. Local participants in surveys indicated that the cost of synthetic impregnation of bed nets was a major financial hurdle, even though a cost of US$ ~1 per impregnation may seem very minor. Knowing which common species are effective alternatives to costly synthetic repellents is likely to increase the willingness of people to impregnate, as well as the frequency of bed net impregnation, both of which could subsequently reduce the incidence of vector-borne diseases. Knowing which plant species are effective as repellents, against which animal species, for which duration of time, and how to prepare and preserve extracts of these plants, is difficult for local people to do as most lack time and training for structured study and analysis of these properties. At the same time, hematophagous parasites are omnipresent and an important source of disease and mortality in the Lao countryside, and this knowledge could contribute significantly to health prospects. This survey and subsequent studies (de Boer et al. 2010; Vongsombath et al. 2011; Vongsombath 2011; de Boer et al. 2011) all aim to elucidate the diversity of used species and the efficacy of the most salient species (those that are mentioned most frequently) through repellency studies.

This research is a collaboration with Chanda Vongsombath, Hugo de Boer, Thomas Jaenson, Anna-Karin Borg-Karlsson and Katinka Pålsson.

Publications

Phylogeny and biogeography of Trichosanthes (Cucurbitaceae)

The Cucurbitaceae genus Trichosanthes comprises 90-100 species that occur from India to Japan, and southeast to Australia and Fiji. Most species have large white or pale yellow petals with conspicuously fringed margins, the fringes sometimes several cm long. Pollination is usually by hawkmoths. Previous molecular data for a small number of species suggested that a mon-ophyletic Trichosanthes might include the Asian genera Gymnopetalum (four species, lacking long petal fringes) and Hodgsonia (two species with petals fringed). In this study we tested these groups’ relationships using a sampling of 60% of their species and 4759 nucleotides of nuclear and plastid DNA. Time and direction of the geographic expansion of the Trichosanthes clade was inferred using molecular clock dating and statistical biogeographic reconstruction, and we also address the gain or loss of petal fringes. The results show that Trichosanthes is monophyletic as long as it includes Gym-nopetalum, which itself is polyphyletic. The closest relative of Trichosanthes appears to be the sponge gourds, Luffa, while Hodgsonia is more distantly related. Of nine morphology-based sections in Trichosanthes, three are sup-ported by the molecular results; and two new sections appear warranted. Molecular dating and biogeographic analyses suggest an Oligocene origin of Trichosanthes in Eurasia or East Asia, followed by diversification and spread throughout the Malesian biogeographic region and into the Australian continent. In conclusion, we can say that long-fringed corollas evolved inde-pendently in Hodgsonia and Trichosanthes, followed by two losses in the latter coincident with shifts to other pollinators but not with long-distance dispersal events. Together with the Caribbean Linnaeosicyos, the Madagas-can Ampelosicyos and the tropical African Telfairia, these cucurbit lineages represent an ideal system for more detailed studies of the evolution and func-tion of petal fringes in plant-pollinator mutualisms.

Publications

DNA barcoding of medicinal plants

Research on molecular barcoding of medicinal plants traded in the medina of Marrakech, Morocco, the markets of Erbil, Kurdistan, and the markets of Dar es Salaam and Tanga, Tanzania . Research in Marrakech focused on the feasability of identifying traded medicinal roots from the market of Marrakech using a reference library of DNA sequences. Different DNA markers are evaluated for their ease of amplification, reliance on tailored databases, and accuracy in species level identification. Additionally the project looks at root complexes, species substitution and species mixtures. This project is a collaboration with Dr. Gary Martin, Global Diversity Foundation, Dr. Abdelaziz Abbad and Abderrahim Ouarghidi, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech, Morocco, and Dr. My Ahmed El Alaoui El Fels of the Natural History Museum Marrakech

Abderrahim Ouarghidi is involved in the project as a PhD student, and both Asa Kruger and Anders Rydberg have carried out graduate research within the project for their MSc theses. Publications

Other activities

Teaching at Uppsala University (see course homepage)
Consulting to Uppsala Monitoring Centre, the WHO International Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring concerning nomenclature and synonymy of plants used in herbal medicine
Botanical research and consulting through a spin-off company: De Boer & Kool HB.

About myself

I am ethnobotanist and plant systematist with an interest in: ethnobotany of traded medicinal plants, DNA barcoding of medicinal plants, monitoring wildlife trade, medicinal plants used in postpartum healthcare, herbal pharmacovigilance, herbal pharmacoepidemiology quantitative ethnobiology, biocultural diversity research, horizontal transmission of useful plant knowledge, and teaching ethnobotany and floristics. My background is in systematic botany, chemistry, population biology and molecular biology. I have a PhD degree from Uppsala University and MSc degrees from both Uppsala University and Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Feel free to contact me with questions, both popular and scientific.