The special study entitled “Problems and Prospects of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants’ Cultivation and Marketing (A Case Study from Sarlahi District)” aimed at examining the locally preferred medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) and choose top-four ranked among them; finding out the trend of MAPs marketing for the preferred species and exploring existing problems and the prospects or potentials for MAPs cultivation and marketing. Forty percentage of total cultivators’ HHs randomly were interviewed from the purposively selected eleven village development committee in Sarlahi District. Designed schedule and checklists were used to collect data through interviews and group discussion, which were analyzed with Ms-excel and Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS).

From analysis and interpretation, it is found that Chamomile, Sarpagandha, Tulsi and Asparagus wild are the first, second, third and fourth preferred MAPs respectively. Major problems of the species for cultivation and marketing are: unavailability of markets, lower price, lack of knowledge about markets, no any security for risks and uncertainty for cultivation and marketing; no subsidy for cultivation and market facilities except seedlings of Asparagus hybrid for some of cultivators’ HHs provided by Dabur Nepal. Nevertheless, they were found to be suffering from risks and uncertainty, unavailability of markets and monopoly pricing, they have positive attitude about the potentialities/prospects of MAPs in future for development of MAPs-based enterprises, utilization of the abandoned and uncultivated lands,increase productivity of soils, increase national revenue and support to community development resulting in poverty reduction in the areas.

The trend of marketing in terms of total quantity traded, price kg^-1 and income obtained from Sarpagandha was found to have more fluctuations with increasing rates than those of Asparagus, Tulsi and Chamomile.

So, the high priority of chamomile, Sarpagandha, Tulsi and Asparagus for cultivation at rural level should be given. Cultivators should have the knowledge of markets and price rate prior to the cultivation of the medicinal plants. There is a need to arrange MAPs section under District Forest Office with skilled and trained technicians. Rules and regulations should be formulated and enforced strictly for networking and to provide subsidy, loan and timely technical support. Further it is necessary to study on “Cultivation and Marketing of Individual Medicinal and Aromatic Plant Species” to be fruitful to all the professionals and the concerned stakeholders.