MedPlants4Vet Advances with New Catalan Ethnoveterinary Data

A recent virtual mobility grant has significantly enriched the MedPlants4Vet project's WG3 database. The initiative successfully compiled and standardized over 1,500 entries of ethnoveterinary data from Catalan grey literature, translating them into English and preparing them for integration into the project's central database.

Fuencisla Cáceres, the researcher working on the Catalan ethnoveterinary data for the MP4V database, from her desk at the University of Barcelona’s Faculty of Pharmacy. (Photo: Maria Orriols, University of Barcelona)

As part of a Working Group 3 virtual mobility grant, Fuencisla Cáceres, the researcher responsible for Catalan ethnoveterinary data within MP4V, carried out a key component of the project's data collection strategy from her desk at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Barcelona. The grant supported the structured extraction and standardisation of ethnoveterinary information for inclusion in the MP4V database.

Using a protocol developed specifically for WG3, data were extracted from www.etnobotanica.iec.cat, a unique open-access database compiling ethnobotanical knowledge from the Catalan linguistic area. The work was supervised by Dr. Airy Gras and focused on aligning the data with MP4V's quality and comparability requirements.

The resulting dataset includes essential information such as plant species, animal health conditions treated, and plant parts used. By integrating high-quality ethnoveterinary data and relevant grey literature, this contribution strengthens the MP4V knowledge base and supports future research activities, including meta-analyses and potential regulatory assessments. Overall, the virtual mobility grant represents an important step toward closing knowledge gaps in herbal veterinary medicine.