ABSTRACT
The paper narrates a brief review of research advances undertaken by the author and his team on various aspects of native economic plants and also trees and shrubs in Northeast Mexico. Research on native plants includes native crops species, medicinal plants, fiber-yielding plants, cactus spp. The research on medicinal plants in Northeast and highlands of Mexico involved the studies that dealt mainly on ethnobotany, pharmacognosy, phytochemistry, macro- and micronutrients of medicinal plants. Various research methodologies are discussed on different economic plants of Mexico.
The present review makes a synthesis of various aspects of applied biology of more than 30 woody plant species of a Tamaulipan Thorn scrub, Northeastern Mexico on various aspects, such as variability in leaf traits, leaf anatomy, plant characteristics, wood anatomy, wood density, phenology, and few aspects of physiology and biochemistry namely, leaf pigments, leaf epicuticular wax, trees with high nutritional values, carbon fixation, nitrogen and protein contents. The results show a large variability of all the morpho-physiological traits of the woody species related to the coexistence and adaptation of the woody species to the semiarid conditions of Northeast Mexico.
