Therapeutic potential and ethnopharmacology of dominant mangroves of Bhitarkanika National Park, Odisha, India.

<b>Purpose </b>Bhitarkanika National Park is the second largest contiguous mangrove with one of the most diverse mangrove habitations forest of India. Approximately 0.15 million mangrove depending population are found residing in and around the National Park. However, the ethnopharmacological practices are comparatively lower than the other mangrove regions of India and Southeast Asia. The present review is aimed to congregate information on the therapeutic potential and ethnopharmacology of nine dominant mangrove species of the National Park. <b>Materials and methods </b>Information are curated from different scientific electronic databases and also from various published books and literatures from libraries. <b>Results </b>An array of phytocompounds of varied chemical classes has already been characterized from these mangroves throughout the globe targeting a multitude of diseases. But, only a few local mangrove species were evaluated for their biological activities related to their primary or secondary metabolites and any novel phytocompound is yet to be reported from the National park. The therapeutic potential of different plant part extracts and the isolated phytocompounds are summerized alongwith the ethnopharmacological information. <b>Conclusion and future perspectives </b>The present review will generate awareness and promote uses of folklore medicine as a tool to strengthen community health among the mangrove dwellers around Bhitarkanika National Park, which is one of the most under-studied mangrove region of South-east Asia. There are also astounding scopes for following future researches on the mangroves of Bhitarkanika as well as of India, like 1. chemotyping and genotyping of phytocompounds in mangrove plants, 2. characterization of phytocompounds from mangrove endophytes, 3. understanding the epigenetic variation in magroves as an impact of agroclimatic variations, environmental fluctuations with reference to salinity, submergence and ambient oxygen stresses, and 4. possibility of mangrove phytocompounds as epi drugs.