Throughout the world surveys have been conducted at the country level to answer research questions pertaining to ethnomedicinal usage patterns. This study is focused on Thailand, which has never been surveyed systematically in this way. We mined 16,000 use reports from 64 scientific reports, published from 1990 to 2014. In total, 2187 plant species were cited as being useful for medicinal purposes. The overall aim was to reveal the relative importance of the plant families for pharmacological research. To determine the most important medicinal plant families we use a combination of three statistical approaches: linear regression, Binomial analysis and Bayesian analysis. At the regional level 19 plant families repeatedly stood out as being the most important from an ethnomedicinal perspective.

Throughout SE Asia, palms are important in agroforestry systems and homegardens. Most species are used for multiple purposes based on both physical and nutritional properties of the palms. Except for a few commodities of worldwide importance such as palm oil and coconut, many palm products either do not figure in trade statistics, or they are merged with other products in a way, which makes it difficult to assess their importance. Here we focus on these products that are not prominent in national trade statistics and we review their sustainability and economic importance in SE Asia. We rank the most important palms according to their versatility, which is an extremely important property, especially for smallholders who practice subsistence agriculture. We conclude by listing a number of recommendations for future research directions based on experiences from the recently completed EU 7th Framework project (EU-PALMS 2009-2013).