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Economic Benefits
Human beings have already obtained enormous direct economic benefits from biodiversity in the form of food, cloth, medicines, industrial products, etc. But these benefits have been derived from only a very small fraction of the total biodiversity which can be exploited. Most of our crops were originally wild plants and could be developed into productive crops through selection and breeding.

About 7,000 plant species have been used as food, but several times this number of species are known to have edible parts and, therefore, can be used in future. Similarly, a large number of medicines have their origin in plants or in microorganisms. Quinine and penicillin are two such examples which are used extensively against some of the most dreadly diseases. With the advent of biotechnology, in future, genes from many species will be utilized for a variety of purposes. But if the biodiversity is lost, these future possibilities will also disappear.