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INTRODUCTION India has a rich biodiversity and stood eight major centers of origin and diversification of domesticated taxa (Shiva, 2007) over 2000 different pigments are secreted by plants. The majority of these are used only locally by the indigenous people, of these a mere handful have been able to compete with the artificial colours (Sharma, 2002).Nature has gifted us more than 500 dye yielding plant species of which about 50 species are considered to be the most important (Mahanta and Tiwari, 2005). Both ancient and recent cultures have been using plants as a source of medicines, dyes, foods, clothing and shelter. Now– a– days natural dyes are gaining popularity again throughout the world. The dyes has been under constant use since prehistoric period, but now synthetic dyes due to their low cost, brightness, easy usability, permanency and a wide range of colour offered threat to wipe out the natural dye industry. A large number of families of plant kingdom comprise an important source of natural dyes of which Fabaceae contains perhaps the largest number of dye yielding plants (Pandey and Chadha 2001). Some kinds of vegetables dye have been used to ward off the spells of evil spirits or to frighten enemies and for personal adornment. Their use has become such a part of mans customs that it is difficult to imagine the modern world without them, without multicolored dress of men, women and children the world would be very drab. Pant (1998). A good amount of information has been generated on the ehnomedicine, floristic and economic botany by various workers in west Vidarbha, but no efforts have been made on the dye yielding plants. West Vidarbha comprises by five districts viz. Akola, Amravati, Buldhana, Washim and Yeotmal. Vegetation is temperate dry deciduous type in most part of the region while in Melghat tribal region vegetation is moist deciduous type and consider as the most rich vegetation belt of West Vidarbha. In West Vidarbha ethnomedicinal study is worked by Bhogaonkar and Devarkar, (2002) Chaudhary and Hutke, (2004), Deshmukh et. al. (2004), Rothe and Kothale, (2009), Naik, Flora of Marathwada, 1998, for identification of plants and the Floristic Survey was made by Dhore,(2001), Diwakar, (2000), Kamble and Pradhan, (1988), Karthikeyen (2001), and Deore ( 2010), for his P.hD. work. Natural dyes are less toxic, less polluting, less hazardous, non–carcinogenic and nonpoisonous. In addition to several advantages, there are some limitations as well as tedious extraction of colored components from raw material, low color value and longer time make the cost of dyeing with natural dyes are fugitive and need a mordant for enhancement of their fastness properties. Some of the metallic mordant is hazardous. Now it is proper time that step should be taken towards collection, documentation, assessment and characterization of natural dye yielding plants as well as further research to overcome the limitation of natural dyes. 1 A ROLE OF NATURAL DYES IN DYEING AND PRINTING OF NATURAL FABRICS FROM WESTERN VIDARBHA.