Medicinal and aromatic plants as source of essential oils for curing diseases in Western Algeria

Medicinal and Aromatic Plants hold a crucial position worldwide for their broad potential of activity due to several phytopharmaceutically important bioactive compounds such as essential oils. This study was conducted in order to investigate medicinal and aromatic plants and theirs extracts such as essential oil for their traditional therapeutic potential. In this study an ethnobotanical interview for two years (2019–2021) with 121 healers was conducted to document medicinal and aromatic plants used by local healers as a source of essential oils which are used for curing different human diseases. Open-ended questions were asked to recognize these batanical species used as a source of essential oils and to identify their vast medicinal potential uses. To assess the reliability and wealth of local knowledge of the regions studied, two indices were calculated; Use Value and Informant Consensus Factor. During the present study, we have identified 40 medicinal and aromatic plants extracted traditionally by hydrodistillation method to obtain essential oils belonging to 10 different botanical families dominated by Lamiaceae (37.5%). The aerial parts are the most used for essential oils extraction (42.5%). All these oils are known for their uses to treat multiple ailments. Among the 17 categories of diseases; tumors, hair, influenza and diabetes had the highest Informant Consensus Factor of 1.00 each. Results of this study showed that extracts of medicinal and aromatic plants especially essential oils reflect the richness that characterizes Saida and Tiaret regions.