Activities associated with Medicinal Aromatic Plant supply chains.

Market-oriented MAP activities may include:

• domestication of the resource and on-farm cultivation; 

• collection of the wild resource; 

• management of the wild resource; 

• processing, ranging from cleaning or simple air-drying to more complex processing requiring specialist skills (for example, oven drying or distilling), purchased inputs (for example, different substrates to carry the medicinal properties, for example an oil in a lotion, or alcohol in a tincture) or technologies (for example, fermentation, solvent extraction); 

• storage, including accumulating the raw product and/or the processed product at different points of trade; 

• transport, from collection site to home, or sale to traditional healers where further processing takes place; 

• marketing and sale – identifying informal and formal options, including rural farmers markets, directly to healers, small shops, etc. 

There are also less obvious but important activities, such as information gathering on such things as market trends in pricing or consumer preferences, and capacity building of the different actors associated with trade