The Effect of Covid-19 on medicinal and aromatic plants use: The case of Turkey

Abstract

Covid-19, one of the coronaviruses, emerged in Wuhan, China, due to zoonotic infection towards the end of December 2019. According to WHO data, Covid-19 has been present among 267.865.289 people in 222 countries, causing death for 5.285.888 (December 12, 2021). Furthermore, these figures are increasing every day. In Turkey, 8.984.407 people have been infected thus far, and 78.602 have died (December 12, 2021). The following questions were investigated in this study: Does Covid-19 affect the use of medicinal and aromatic plants? If it does, what are the changes? What types of herbs are used and in which ways are they used? Who advises people to use these herbs? According to the results, 113 taxa belonging to 61 families and 105 genera were used by the participants at the genus, species and subspecies levels. Herbs that were widely used are Thymus spp., Tilia spp., Salvia spp., Zingiber officinale Roscoe, Mentha spp., Curcuma longa L., Rosa canina L., Camellia sinensis (L.) Kuntze, Lavandula spp., Matricaria spp., respectively. There was a positive and moderate-level relationship between medicinal and aromatic plants before and after COVID-19 and another positive and moderate-level relationship between the frequencies of using medicinal and aromatic plants before and after the pandemic. The relationships were significant for both questionnaire items. Moreover, there was a significant difference between the frequency of use of medicinal and aromatic plants before and after Covid-19.