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Yanung Jamoh Lego
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Agriculture · Arunachal Pradesh

The keeper of Adi plant knowledge

Yanung Jamoh Lego was trained as an agricultural scientist, and trained again by her father in the plant lore of the Adi people. She has spent her life making sure that knowledge is grown, planted and taught, not lost.

Yanung Jamoh Legoयानुंग जमोह लेगो
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Yanung Jamoh Lego. Photo: Padma Awards, Government of India

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Born
9 July 1963, Sika Tode village
District
East Siang, Arunachal Pradesh
Field
Traditional herbal knowledge, medicinal plants, agriculture
Honours
SRISTI Samman 2007; Paramparika Vaidya Ratna 2013; Arunachal Pradesh State Award 2019; Padma Shri 2024
1988joins the Agriculture Department
2009starts Indigenous Herbal Heritage
1,00,000+people reached (citation)

Two kinds of learning

Yanung Jamoh Lego’s story is a bridge between indigenous knowledge and formal agricultural education. According to her official Padma citation, she was born on 9 July 1963 in Sika Tode village, East Siang.

After a B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat, she joined the Arunachal Pradesh Agriculture Department in 1988 and served until July 2023.

From her father’s teaching

Her path into herbal knowledge came from her father, a folk healer. The citation gives a chronology of about 15 years of apprenticeship from 1981, and her own practice from 1995.

In 2009 she started an initiative called Indigenous Herbal Heritage, focused on growing medicinal plants, household kitchen gardens and awareness of traditional knowledge. According to the citation, it has taken herbal-plant education to more than 1 lakh people, and plants about 5,000 medicinal plants every year.

Respect, and evidence

The medical side of her profile needs care. Her citation makes treatment claims, including figures for patients that do not match each other and statements about curing serious diseases. These are claims in a government citation, and this archive does not present them as clinically proven.

Her strongest and best-documented contribution is preserving, cultivating and teaching traditional medicinal-plant knowledge, and that is what we honour here.

Sources