Ginkgo: The good memory tree. A community outreach and education experience about an ornamental and medicinal plant species

FANGANO, I; DEL VALLE, ELENA; FAIT, E.; MORACCI, L.; BELTRAMI, F.; ROSELLA, M.; VAIRO CAVALLI, S.; MORCELLE DEL VALLE, S.R.

Rosario

Congreso; 4ta Reunión Internacional de Ciencias Farmacéuticas; 2016

Colegio de Farmacéuticos de la Provincia de Santa Fe

Ginkgo biloba ? a popular ornamental tree in parks and city streets worldwide ? is considered an ideal tree for urban forestry due to its high resistance to urban pollution and pests, as well as for its little invasive potential. Besides, G. biloba is a plant drug used in Chinese ethnomedicine, and nowadays its leaf extract is used mainly for the improvement of memory, among other uses.Based on the remarkable characteristics of ginkgo, the educational project Foresting with ginkgo developed in a secondary school of La Plata (Colegio Lincoln, CL) was linked to Ginkgo: the good memory tree, a community outreach and education activity performed by the teaching staff of the Pharmacognosy and Plant Biology courses [Facultad de Ciencias Exactas (FCE), UNLP]. Foresting with ginkgo is a project that consists on the propagation and growing out of ginkgo trees in the school plant nursery, and their transplantation in public spaces of La Plata. Ginkgo: the good memory tree is an activity whose main goal is the demonstration and practice in laboratory of the extraction and identification of the flavonoids present in the ginkgo leaves. The activity was performed with the students of the last year of the Natural Sciences curriculum of the CL in the laboratories of the FCE and was divided into three stages: a) obtaining extracts from different samples containing the plant drug; b) botanical identification of ginkgo leaves by macro and microscopic observation; c) characterization, separation and identification of the main flavonoids present in the extracts obtained in a).The articulation of both activities led to the active participation and interest of the students, and promoted their awareness of the value of ginkgo not only as an ornamental tree to forest the city streets, but also as a medicinal plant from which different bioactive compounds can be extracted.