The revival and development of traditional medicines can be observed throughout the world, emerging as significant pharmaceutical and wellness industries, as well as objects of academic research. After almost 70 years of exclusively biomedical healthcare, traditional medicine in Mongolia gaining popularity and scholarly attention. However, such attention remains limited to human medicine, while ignoring the domain of veterinary medicine.
The latter can be traced back through thousands of years of nomadic farming economy. Due to the widespread destruction in the 1930s and the ensuing suppression of traditional knowledge and culture in Mongolia, only few records on traditional veterinary medicine survived. Hyper-diverse communities of long-lived trees, shrubs and various other unique plants are used for this purpose. Their use is defined by ecological success of these plants, especially due to their arsenal of special metabolites, operative against herbivores/pathogens, to mitigate effects of climate conditions, and other abiotic stresses. The aim of our KoEF-funded project Traditional Mongolian Veterinary Medicine Plants was to identify the key chemical components required for their biological activities, especially the chemical signature of plants, timber fungi, and the rare faunal ingredient (Moschus) traditionally used in veterinary medicine.
The research was concentrating on the identification of specialized metabolites, i.e. VOCs and various other terpenes & phenolics in plant and lignicolous fungi species, specifically on method development for their separation, identification and targeted metabolomic data analysis, testing the hypothesis that emitted volatiles and related compounds play crucial role in veterinary medicine use. The localization of different specialized metabolite classes within the ultrastructure was achieved in order to understand how these compounds are located and stored.
In addition to the detailed metabolomic analysis of general and specialized metabolites, facilitation of international knowledge transfer & collaboration took place. This project bears the main idea of a wider development of cooperation combining the best research technologies and resources and expertise from two countries, from several different scientific organizations. To enable knowledge transfer, the project, team participated in various international scientific events, and field trips at regular intervals. This project initiated an interdisciplinary effort to study, document and assess traditional veterinary medicines in Mongolia for the first time through an integrative approach consisting of biological, phytochemical, socio-cultural, & philological expertise.
The project offered a diverse, interdisciplinary, and timely research to educate and inspire students in both countries, Mongolia and Austria. The project generated three manuscripts, seven international conference contributions which feed directly into collaboration between Austrian and Mongolian scientists in the form of two follow up projects.
