1887 | Page Distribution, Status, Pharmacological, and Traditional importance of Peganum harmala L. Nissar Ahmad Khan 1 , Aamir Raina 2 , Nasir Aziz Wagay 3 Younas Rasheed Tantray 4 1 Department of Botany, faculty of life Sciences, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab(India) 2 Mutation breeding Lab, Department of Botany, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh-U.P (India) 3 Botany Research Laboratory,Vidhyabharti Mahavidyalya, Amravati, Maharashtra, (India) 4 Department of Botany, faculty of life Sciences, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab (India) ABSTRACT Peganum harmala L. Commonly known as Syrian rue, Wild rue or Harmal is native to arid and semi-arid regions of Northern African and Asian deserts that have spread to parts of the southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. It is a multipurpose medicinal plant with antimicrobial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, antidiabetic, anti cancerous, hypothermic and hallucinogenic activities. Phytochemical investigations has revealed the presences of a number of active alkaloids especially beta-carbolines such as harmalol, harmaline, and harmine. Seeds and roots contain the highest levels of alkaloids with low level in stem and leaves and absent in flowers. This emphasizes on the need of widespread study for covering the supplementary information on the medicinal importance of other species of genus peganum. Keywords: Beta- carbolines, distribution, Peganum harmula, pharmalogy, Toxicity. I. INTRODUCTION Peganum is a genus of five to six species distributed in the old world from the Mediterranean to Mongolia and in the new world from Texas to Mexico [1] (Table 1). The genus contains perennial herbs which are dispersed in the central Asia, Mexico and the Southern United States. It is a member of Zygophyllaceae, consisting of six species in China out of which three species, P. harmala Linn. P. nigellastrum Bunge. and P. multisectum (Maxim.) Bobr. are found mainly in arid and semi-arid areas in northwest China and are vital components of the desert vegetation. Although it belongs to the family Zygophyllaceae but its taxonomic position is still debatable and a separate family Nitrariaceae has been proposed for this genus [2]. Peganum harmala L. (2n=24) is a perennial flowering herb growing in Africa, the Middle East, India, Pakistan, Mexico, South America and several other countries [3]. It is native to arid and semi-arid regions of Northern African and Asian deserts that have spread to parts of the South Western United States and Northern Mexico [4]. It is a drought tolerant plant in arid parts of Central Asia, North Africa and Middle East and has been introduced in America and Australia [5]. According to [6] Peganum harmala is native to eastern Mediterranean region and widely distributed in Middle East, India, Mongolia and China. Peganum harmala can grow in areas receiving as little as 100 mm annual precipitation [7, 8] and is considered drought tolerant [9]. The species grows with an altitudinal gradient of 1590-3400 m as