Universidade Federal do Oeste da Bahia, Centro das Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, Estrada para o Barrocão, s/n, Morada Nobre, 47800-000 Barreiras-BA, Brazil.
Universidade Federal do Oeste da Bahia, Centro das Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, Estrada para o Barrocão, s/n, Morada Nobre, 47800-000 Barreiras-BA, Brazil.
J Ethnopharmacol. 2015 Jan 15;159:43-8. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2014.11.001. Epub 2014 Nov 11.
This study examined how people classify plants in terms of their taste and smell, and how those organoleptic properties influence the differential use of medicinal plants for treating different diseases.
We conducted an ethnobotanical survey of household heads in the community of Sucruiu, located in Barreiras, Bahia, Brazil. The head of each family was questioned concerning their knowledge and use of medicinal plants, as well as the therapeutic indications (TIs), taste, and smell of each plant. We then tested for associations between the therapeutic indications and taste attributes of various plants using the Chi-squared test on a contingency table with Monte Carlo simulations. The same analysis was performed for associations between TIs and smell.
The study participants provided more details when classifying tastes than when classifying smells. We considered only the most cited TIs and attributes, and found significant associations between both taste and therapeutic indications (p<0.001) and smell and therapeutic indications (p<0.0001).
Our results showed that the taste and smell of a plant can influence its differential medicinal use, since plants with certain tastes and smells prevailed in the treatment of distinct diseases. However, our results are valid only for the most popular TIs and organoleptic attributes.
本研究考察了人们如何根据植物的味道和气味对其进行分类，以及这些感官特性如何影响药用植物在治疗不同疾病方面的差异使用。
我们对巴西巴伊亚州巴雷里拉斯市苏克鲁伊乌社区的户主进行了民族植物学调查。每个家庭的户主都被问到他们对药用植物的了解和使用情况，以及每种植物的治疗用途（TI）、味道和气味。然后，我们使用带有蒙特卡罗模拟的列联表的卡方检验来检验各种植物的治疗用途与味道属性之间的关联。对于治疗用途与气味之间的关联也进行了相同的分析。
研究参与者在分类味道时比在分类气味时提供了更多细节。我们只考虑了引用最多的 TI 和属性，并发现味道和治疗用途之间（p<0.001）以及气味和治疗用途之间（p<0.0001）存在显著关联。
我们的结果表明，植物的味道和气味可以影响其差异药用用途，因为具有某些味道和气味的植物在治疗不同疾病方面更为常见。然而，我们的结果仅适用于最受欢迎的 TI 和感官属性。
