Respiratory disorders are a common cause of malady and demise in Pakistan due to its remoteness, cold and harsh climatic conditions as well as scarce health care facilities. The people rely upon the indigenous plant resources to cure various respiratory disorders. The primary objective of this review was to assemble all available ethno-medicinal data of plants used for respiratory disorders in Pakistan. Pharmacological activity of these plants (based upon published scientific research), distribution, diversity, use, preparation methods, economical value, conservation status and various available herbal products of some plants have also been explored. This study scrutinized various electronic databases for the literature on medicinal plants used in Pakistan to treat respiratory disorders. A total of 384 species belonging to 85 families used to treat respiratory disorders in Pakistan has been documented. Cough was the disorder treated by the highest number of species (214) followed by asthma (150), cold (57) and bronchitis (56). Most of the plants belongs to Asteraceae (32) and Solanaceae family (32) followed by moraceae (17), Poaceae (13), and Amaranthaceae (13) with their habit mostly of herb (219) followed by Shrub (112) and tree (69). Traditional healers in the region mostly prepare ethno medicinal recipes from leaves (24%) and roots (11%) in the form of decoction. Among the reported conservation status of 51 plant species, 5 were endangered, 1 critically endangered, 11 vulnerable, 14 rare, 16 least concern, 3 infrequent and 1 near threatened. We found only 53 plants on which pharmacological studies were conducted and 17 plants being used in herbal products available commercially for respiratory disorders. We showed the diversity and importance of medicinal plants used to treat respiratory disorders in the traditional health care system of Pakistan. As such disorders are still causing several deaths each year, it is of the utmost importance to conduct phytochemical and pharmacological studies on the most promising species. It is also crucial to increase access to traditional medicine, especially in rural areas. Threatened species need special attention for traditional herbal medicine to be exploited sustainably.

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Berberine-containing plants have been traditionally used in different parts of the world for the treatment of inflammatory disorders, skin diseases, wound healing, reducing fevers, affections of eyes, treatment of tumors, digestive and respiratory diseases, and microbial pathologies. The physico-chemical properties of berberine contribute to the high diversity of extraction and detection methods. Considering its particularities this review describes various methods mentioned in the literature so far with reference to the most important factors influencing berberine extraction. Further, the common separation and detection methods like thin layer chromatography, high performance liquid chromatography, and mass spectrometry are discussed in order to give a complex overview of the existing methods. Additionally, many clinical and experimental studies suggest that berberine has several pharmacological properties, such as immunomodulatory, antioxidative, cardioprotective, hepatoprotective, and renoprotective effects. This review summarizes the main information about botanical occurrence, traditional uses, extraction methods, and pharmacological effects of berberine and berberine-containing plants.

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Background and aims Seed persistence in the soil under field conditions is an important issue for the maintenance of local plant populations and the restoration of plant communities, increasingly so in the light of rapidly changing land use and climate change. Whereas processes important for dispersal in space are well known, knowledge of processes governing dispersal in time is still limited. Data for morphological seed traits such as size have given contradictory results for prediction of soil seed persistence or cover only a few species. There have been few experimental studies on the role of germination traits in determining soil seed persistence, while none has studied their predictive value consistently across species. Delayed germination, as well as light requirements for germination, have been suggested to contribute to the formation of persistent seed banks. Moreover, diurnally fluctuating temperatures can influence the timing of germination and are therefore linked to seed bank persistence. Methods The role of germination speed measured by T(50) (days to germination of 50 % of all germinated seeds), light requirement and reaction to diurnally fluctuating temperatures in determining seed persistence in the soil was evaluated using an experimental comparative data set of 25 annual cereal weed species. Key results It is shown that light requirements and slow germination are important features to maintain seeds ungerminated just after entering the soil, and hence influence survival of seeds in the soil. However, the detection of low diurnally fluctuating temperatures enhances soil seed bank persistence by limiting germination. Our data further suggest that the effect of diurnally fluctuating temperatures, as measured on seeds after dispersal and dry storage, is increasingly important to prevent fatal germination after longer burial periods. Conclusions These results underline the functional role of delayed germination and light for survival of seeds in the soil and hence their importance for shaping the first part of the seed decay curve. Our analyses highlight the detection of diurnally fluctuating temperatures as a third mechanism to achieve higher soil seed persistence after burial which interacts strongly with season. We therefore advocate focusing future research on mechanisms that favour soil seed persistence after longer burial times and moving from studies of morphological features to exploration of germination traits such as reaction to diurnally fluctuating temperatures.

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Background and aims Seed survival in the soil contributes to population persistence and community diversity, creating a need for reliable measures of soil seed bank persistence. Several methods estimate soil seed bank persistence, most of which count seedlings emerging from soil samples. Seasonality, depth distribution and presence (or absence) in vegetation are then used to classify a species' soil seed bank into persistent or transient, often synthesized into a longevity index. This study aims to determine if counts of seedlings from soil samples yield reliable seed bank persistence estimates and if this is correlated to seed production. Methods Seeds of 38 annual weeds taken from arable fields were buried in the field and their viability tested by germination and tetrazolium tests at 6 month intervals for 2.5 years. This direct measure of soil seed survival was compared with indirect estimates from the literature, which use seedling emergence from soil samples to determine seed bank persistence. Published databases were used to explore the generality of the influence of reproductive capacity on seed bank persistence estimates from seedling emergence data. Key results There was no relationship between a species' soil seed survival in the burial experiment and its seed bank persistence estimate from published data using seedling emergence from soil samples. The analysis of complementary data from published databases revealed that while seed bank persistence estimates based on seedling emergence from soil samples are generally correlated with seed production, estimates of seed banks from burial experiments are not. Conclusions The results can be explained in terms of the seed size-seed number trade-off, which suggests that the higher number of smaller seeds is compensated after germination. Soil seed bank persistence estimates correlated to seed production are therefore not useful for studies on population persistence or community diversity. Confusion of soil seed survival and seed production can be avoided by separate use of soil seed abundance and experimental soil seed survival.

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Meteorological patterns have a decisive influence on the inter-annual dynamics of therophyte pastures under Mediterranean climatic conditions. The germination behaviour of annual pasture species was studied by subjecting two collections of seeds taken from plants and soil-seed banks to two phytotron-simulated weather patterns: early and late autumn rains. Species from these pastures were arranged along a gradient of sensitivity to temperature on the arrival of the first persistent rain. This sensitivity was manifested in both the total germination success of the species and the germination time profile. The different germination patterns of the species can provide competitive advantages depending on the autumn weather conditions.

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