Unlike food crops, the medicinal plants' group is made up of diverse types of species, and the taxonomy of many of these species is still very vague.

Thus the identification of each species, its medicinal properties and quality of the ingredient is especially difficult and time-consuming. Exact identification of the needed plant type or variety is vital not only for promoting research on medicinal plants but also in processing and marketing them.

To do this effectively, there is a need for a mechanism or tool for effective description of medicinal plants and descriptors similar to many crops will be most useful in providing a standardized description of medicinal plants.

Such standardization will assist in ease of understanding by all the partners involved in the project and is an essential requirement for regional and international collaboration.

The e-descriptor system currently has descriptors for all the priority medicinal plants identified during the first phase, some of which have been developed by the participating countries through the web.

It was noted that some of the species of medicinal plants identified by countries overlapped with others.