Bioresources of Assam

Assam is one of India's richest states in living wealth, lying where the Eastern Himalaya and Indo-Burma biodiversity regions meet. Some of these living things are

bioresources — organisms people use directly for medicine, timber, fibre and

industry. This chapter of the ASSEB (formerly AHSEC) Class 12 Biology syllabus covers three

groups of economically important bioresources of Assam:

• Medicinal plants — plants whose parts yield drugs and remedies.
• Timber-yielding plants — trees grown or harvested for wood.
• Sericogenic (silk-producing) resources — the insects muga and eri, for which Assam is world-famous.

Assam's higher-secondary science syllabus otherwise follows the NCERT/CBSE Biology

framework; this unit is the state-specific addition. (Assam's national parks, one-horned

rhinoceros and wildlife conservation are studied separately under Biodiversity and Conservation, not here.)