Abstract

STANDARDISATION AND QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF AYURVEDIC/HERBAL DRUGS

*Dr. Amit Singh, Dr. Ayush Kr. Garg, Dr. Chandan Singh and Dr. Devendra Chahar

Abstract

India is a vast and rich resource of herbal raw materials. In its 15 Agroclimatic zones, India is home to a large number of medicinal plants. Out of 960 medicinal plants species, about 178 are in trade with annual consumption of more than 100 metric tons. These plants can create a niche for itself in the global herbal market if the domestic industry is able to regulate quality of herbal products upto international standardrs. WHO traditional medicine strategy 2014-2023 emphasizes integration of traditional and complementary medicine to promote universal healthcare and to ensure the quality, safety and efficacy of such medicine. The current global herbal market is estimated to be around ₴ 70 billion. Indian herbal industry is not only meeting the domestic requirement but few are also exporting to other countries, but India‘s share in export of AYUSH and value added products of medicinal plants in the global herbal medicinal market during 2015-2016 was a miniscule 0.5 percent. Concern have been raised about the quality of the Indian AYUSH medicinal/herbal drugs particularly regarding the presence of toxic heavy metalseg. Lead, mercury, andarsenic, microbialload, aflotoxin, andpesticides. The global acceptibility of our traditional systems of medicine can be met by improving the use of technological inerventions and ensuring the quality of raw materials and processes used in the AYUSH medicinal products. Now, phytopharmaceuticals drugs are being introduced for converting plant material into medicine, where standardisation and quality control with proper integration of modern scientific techniques and traditional knowledge. In order to produce herbal formulations of consistent composition and quality, not only the proper botanical material but adequate analytical methods such as High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography(HPTLC), High Performance Liquid Chromatography(HPLC) and Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP-OES) etc. need to be applied. In this paper I am trying to upgrade the knowledge in developing herbal/Ayurvedic products of uniform quality with robust efficacy on globaly acceptable parameters.

Keywords: Ayurvedic products, AYUSH, Herbal drugs.