Ethnobotany of the Mountain Regions of Central Asia and Altai

Research in recent years has increasingly shifted away from purely academic research, and into applied aspects of the discipline, including climate change research, conservation, and sustainable development. It has by now widely been recognized that “traditional” knowledge is always in flux and adapting to a quickly changing environment. Trends of globalization, especially the globalization of plant markets, have greatly influenced how plant resources are managed nowadays. While ethnobotanical studies are now available from many regions of the world, no comprehensive encyclopedic series focusing on the worlds mountain regions is available in the market. Scholars in plant sciences worldwide will be interested in this dynamic content. 

The field (and thus the market) of ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology has grown considerably in recent years. Student interest is on the rise, attendance at professional conferences has grown steadily, and the number of professionalscalling themselves ethnobotanists has increased significantly. Various societies of such professionals include the Society for Economic Botany, the International Society of Ethnopharmacology, the Society of Ethnobiology, the International Society for Ethnobiology, and many regional and national societies in the field that currently have thousands of members. Growth has been most robust in BRIC countries.


This new MRW on Ethnobotany of Mountain Regions covers the best and latest research and scholarship in the field of mountain research. It offers a full range of descriptive, methodological, theoretical, and applied research on the most important plants for each region. Each contribution was examined with scientific rigor and contributes to the overall field of study.

Dr. Ketevan Batsatsashvili graduated from the Faculty of Biology at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU), Georgia, in 1999. She received her doctorate at Tbilisi State University in 2005 for the thesis “Lichens as bioindicators of air pollution in Tbilisi.” Dr. Batsatsashvili joined the Botany department at TSU as Doctoral Candidate from 2001 to 2005 and the Tbilisi Institute of Botany as Assistant Professor (now Institute of Botany of Ilia State University) since. From 2008 to 2012, she worked as Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ecology of Ilia State University and became Associate Professor of Botany in 2013. Her major research interests are lichens and plant diversity, biological monitoring of environmental stress, species extinction risk assessment, and ethnobiology. Dr. Batsatsashvili has authored and co-authored some 25 research papers and over 250 book chapters.

Dr. Zaal Kikvidze graduated in 1978 from the Faculty of Biology at Tbilisi State University (Georgia) and defended his Ph.D. thesis “Functional properties of Na, K-ATPase” in 1983 at the Georgian National Academy of Sciences. He worked as a Researcher in the Georgian National Academy of Sciences and in the Institute of Teachers’ Training of Georgia and later graduated in the Certificate Course in Environmental Education at Jordanhill College, Strathclyde University, Glasgow,
Scotland, UK. In 1993 he defended a Doctor of Science (Habil.) thesis “Structural and functional optimalization in biological systems” at the Georgian National Academy of Sciences of. Dr. Kikvidze worked as Associate Researcher at Chiba University (Japan), as Ramon-y-Cajal Fellow in the Consejo Superior de las Investigaciones Científicas (Spain), and Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo (Japan). The majorlines of his research are plant community ecology, species diversity and geographical distributions on ecological gradients, rules of species coexistence and interactions among organisms, environmental education, ethno-ecology, and socio-ecology. Dr. Kikvidze published over 115 papers in scientific, educational, and scientific-popular journals and over 250 book chapters. Since 2006 he has been cooperating with Ilia State University and became Professor of Ecology in 2012. Dr. Kikvidze is Full Professor and Director of the Institute
of Ethno-biology and Socio-ecology since 2014. 



Dr. Rainer W. Bussmann earned his M.Sc. (Diploma) in Biology from Universität Tübingen, Germany, in 1993 and his doctorate from Universität Bayreuth, Germany, in 1994. He is an ethnobotanist and vegetation ecologist, and currently Co-director of Saving Knowledge, La Paz, Bolivia, as well as Principal Scientist at the Department of Ethnobotany, Instituteof Botany, Ilia State University, both of which he co-founded. Before retiring from Missouri Botanical Garden, Dr. Bussmann was director of theWilliam L. Brown Center at Missouri Botanical Garden, William L. Brown Curator of Economic Botany, and Senior Curator. Before accepting the directorship of WLBC, he held academic appointments as Research Fellow in Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin from 2006 to 2007, as Associate Professor of Botany and Scientific Director of Harold Lyon Arboretum at the University of Hawaii from 2003 to 2006, and as Assistant Professor at the University of Bayreuth from 1997 to 2003, following a postdoc at the same institution from 1994 to 1997. He holds affiliate faculty appointments at Washington University St. Louis, USA; University of Missouri St. Louis, USA; Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, USA; Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brazil; Universidád Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Perú; and at Ilia State University, Republic of Georgia, and serves as external thesis advisor at several other universities
worldwide. His work focuses on ethnobotanical research and the preservation of traditional knowledge, in Bolivia, Peru, Madagascar, the Caucasus, and the Himalayas. To date, Dr. Bussmann has authored over 260 peer-reviewed papers and over 750 book chapters as well as and authored or edited over 35 books.
Dr. Bussmann is a past President of the Society for Economic Botany and has served as board/council member of the International Society for Ethnopharmacology, Society of Ethnobiology, Botanical Society of America, and International Society of Ethnobiology. See more of his work on his website (https://www.savingknowledge.org/rainer-w-bussmann/) and download publications from ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rainer_Bussmann).