392 5th annual natural health product research conference introduction were delivered by Vladimir Vuksan (President, NHPRS) of University of Toronto, Canada, and John Thor Arnason (Director of NHPRS) of University of Ottawa, Canada. The first plenary lecture was delivered by Tim Johns of McGill University, Canada, who talked about the rising world population, decreasing traditional knowledge and global health problems such as malnutrition and other communicable and non-communicable diseases. He then hypothesized the relevance of ethnobotany to these health problems. Tim described multiple uses of plants and herbs such as: drug discovery like his own work on antiviral and cardioprotective effects of different Kenyan and Tanzanian plants (6–8); providing nutrients in cases of deficiencies such as use of Grewia tenax for overcoming b-carotene and vitamin C deficiency (9,10); functional foods like antidiabetic potential of plants (11,12) and use of plants for income generation and poverty reduction (13,14). According to Tim, ethnobotany can really help contain many of the global health and economic problems. To support his claim, he referred to his work in Africa to rebuild the African food systems by focusing on biodiver- sity (agricultural and forest), dietary diversification and development of natural strategies like encouraging the establishing of home gardens and increasing the use and growth of home-grown vegetables (15–17). The second plenary lecture was given by Rosario Rojas of Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Peru. Rosario talked about the work in progress in her lab in Peru on the medicinal chemistry and pharmacology of different indigenous Peruvian plants, mainly for use in infections, inflammation and cosmetology. She gave particular ref- erence to plants like Myrciaria dubia that has 30 times higher concentration of vitamin C than orange; Pluke- netia volubilis for its rejuvenating effects on the skin; Croton lechleri for its potential in wound healing, ulcers and cancer; Lepechinia meyenii for its spermatogenic and adaptogenic activities and Uncaria tomentosa for its anti- inflammatory and antiarthritic use (18–20). This talk was followed by a very energizing lecture by M.J. Nanjen of JSS College of Pharmacy, India, who talked about Ayurvedic medicine, its challenges and opportunities. The speaker started off by stressing the importance of NHP globally and then moved to NHP use in the Indian subcontinent, where he said Ayurveda enjoys immense popularity within the population along with other systems of medicine like Unani, Siddha and Naturopathy. The speaker briefed the audience about the basis of Ayurveda like the concept behind five elements and the importance of synergism within the constituting herbs. He also discussed the recent trend in modern medicine of prescribing multiple therapies for a particular disease—a trend he said is prevalent in Ayurveda and herbal therapy on the whole. These lectures were followed by a panel discussion on ‘Biodiversity, Ethics and Intellectual Property’ partici- pated by various leaders in the field of NHP. The first speaker of the panel was Mark Blumenthal, Founder and Executive Director of American Botanical Council, USA. Mark talked about the many tribes that are going into extinction around the world and all of their indigenous knowledge that is going away with them. He also talked about biopiracy and patent cases involving maca and turmeric. Mary Hardy of UCLA, USA, talked about ethical considerations in NHP development. She stressed that it is imperative to apply all of the ethical principles like beneficence, justice and autonomy when it comes to developing and propagating NHP use. Simon Brascoupe, a First Nations (Canadian aboriginals) representative, discussed the value of traditional knowledge and how it is transferred from one generation to another. He said that the indigenous knowledge of herbs and their proper use can eradicate many of the health problems seen with the aboriginal people in Canada. Pierre Haddad of University of Montreal, Canada, briefed the audience about the new Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s (CIHR) guidelines for working with First Nation people, which states that researchers should work to: protect the traditional practices and knowledge, state all the intellec- tual property rights in the research agreement, respect the rights of people involved in the studies and keep the concerned aware of transfer of any sample or data of sensitive nature. Pierre gave reference to his work on the plants from Cree communities in Quebec, Canada (21,22). Finally, Roberta Lee of the Beth-Israel Medical Centre, USA, discussed the power of trust and how this element along with respect can be instrumental when it comes to obtaining knowledge from indigenous people. She referred to her years of ethnomedicine work in Micronesia (23–25), which ultimately resulted in compila- tion of the Primary Healthcare Manual on Use of Traditional Plants. Chemical Analysis of NHP Different speakers on the first day also talked about chemical analysis of NHP. Ikhlas Khan of University of Mississippi, USA, talked about some of the problems with plant identification. He described these as adultera- tion, contamination or substitution. According to Ikhlas, this can be checked by identifying plants by genetic fingerprinting strategies (26,27). Brian Schaneberg of ChromaDex Inc., USA, presented his findings on an improved technique for analysis of tea constituents by using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Other speakers also talked about improved or advanced techniques for analysis of plant constituents.