Avanos Vocational School Of Fine Arts

MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC PLANTS PROGRAM

According to the World Health Organization, the number of medicinal and aromatic plants used worldwide today is around 20,000. Of these, 4,000 are commonly used as drugs, and there are approximately 2,000 medicinal plants currently traded around the world.

Due to its geographical location, diverse climate and soil characteristics, and its position at the meeting point of three different phytogeographic regions (Euro-Siberian, Mediterranean, and Iran-Turan), Turkey possesses a rich plant biodiversity. Our flora includes approximately 12,000 plant taxa, with around 3,500 endemic plant species. The number of medicinal plants used is around 500, almost all of which grow naturally.

Medicinal and aromatic plants can be defined as plants that have or potentially have uses in fields such as health, perfumery, cosmetics, food, natural dye, and agricultural pest control due to their active compounds. This group also includes spices used as flavorings in food, as well as herbal teas and dietary supplements that have become increasingly popular in recent years.

Medicinal and aromatic plants contain bioactive secondary metabolites such as steroids, flavonoids, saponins, alkaloids, terpenes, and phenolic compounds. These secondary metabolites possess antimicrobial, antifungal, antiallergic, antidiabetic, cardiovascular protective, antioxidant, anticancer, antithyroid, antihistamine, antimalarial, antihelmintic, anti-inflammatory, antihypertensive, antispasmodic, and analgesic properties. Over the past twenty years, demand for medicinal and aromatic plants has significantly increased due to these properties, and this trend continues to grow rapidly.

The Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Program provides education with the aim of training technical personnel capable of identifying medicinal and aromatic plants from the wide variety of plant species found in Turkey, understanding the methods for obtaining drugs from these plants, using equipment in medical and aromatic laboratories, cultivating plants at risk of extinction, and conducting work to raise awareness in society with a rational approach based on scientific principles. The program also aims to determine the properties and active substances of these plants for the pharmaceutical industry and work on increasing the effective substances that give these plants their therapeutic power.

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC PLANTS PROGRAM GRADUATES

Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Technicians can find employment in companies importing and exporting medicinal plants, laboratories producing herbal medicines, sectors involved in the cultivation or collection of these plants, businesses producing and selling medicinal plant drugs, herbalists, beauty salons, pharmacies producing and selling herbal medicines, aromatherapy centers, perfumery, and cosmetic industries. They can also work in relevant departments of the Ministry of Agriculture, Environment, and Forestry, criminology and forensic medicine laboratories dealing with narcotic plants and plant-based smuggling, customs controls of imported and exported plant products, and in university departments' herbaria and plant laboratories as assistant technical staff. Additionally, they can establish their own production areas and become producers. Upon completion of this program, graduates will have an associate degree and can transfer vertically to plant production departments in faculties of agriculture.

Bachelor's programs that students graduating from the Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Program can enter through the Vertical Transfer Exam include: 

In our program, educational and instructional activities are carried out by three faculty members, while other lecturers and instructors employed by the university, who specialize in the field, also teach courses to our Medicinal and Aromatic Plants program students. Our program includes 360 decares of department land, and classes are conducted in laboratories and classrooms equipped with projectors.