Quality Standards of Indian Medicinal Plants- Volume-3

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Man's dependence on plants for health care is as old as the existence of the mankind on this planet. Since the advent of modern medicine, plants have alas become a source of important phytopharmaceuticals and lead molecules with unique chemical structures and mechanism of action action. Over the last few decades alternative medicine, which is essentially plant based, has experienced a remarkable and steady increase all over the world. This has generated a multifaceted interest in the medicinal plants, which includes the sourcing of the raw material (through cultivation or from wild populations), preparation of formulations, multimarker based phytochemical evaluation for standardization, toxicological and clinical evaluation to establish efficacy and safety, of single drugs as well pharmacological, as polyhedral formulations and their large scale manufacture and marketing. This activity has necessitated the requirement of good quality of raw material. Consequently it became important to establish quality parameters for the herbal raw material. In the recent years many national and international bodies have been preparing and publishing monographs on medicinal plants defining quality parameters necessary to maintain quality.

In India, with its age old traditional systems of medicine and rich treasure of medicinal plants, about 1500 plant species are being used in the Indian System of Medicine, and many more plants in the folk and tribal medicine. The Indian Council of Medical Research took initiative to lay down standards for herbal raw material from important medicinal plants, involving reputed research institutes of India. An outcome of these efforts has been the publication of two volumes of monographs on the "Quality Standards of Indian Medicinal Plants" The current publication is the third volume of this series. The first two volumes received the appreciation of all those involved in different activities related to medicinal plants. We hope that the third volume also will be received well and be of help to herbal drug industry, drug regulatory authorities, researchers and academicians. I greatly appreciate the efforts of the Chairman and members of the Scientific Advisory Group, the Task Force, the Technical Review Committee, investigators and the research institutions which contributed to the significant task of developing quality standards.

The interest in and the demand for the plant based drugs increased in the last few decades, and this led to large scale commercial production of both classical and proprietary herbal formulations in the country. As a result, the demand for herbal raw material also increased. The raw material is being procured from wild as well as cultivated sources. Several factors are known to influence the quality of the herbal raw material. Hence, to maintain quality and to ensure efficacy, quality parameters are to be defined.

Sensing this need, the Indian Council of Medical Research initiated a programme to develop monographs on important Indian medicinal plants involving several research institutes and laboratories of the country. The monographs so evolved are being published under a series. So far two volumes of "Quality Standards of Indian Medicinal Plants have been published which contain monographs on 32 medicinal plants each. This is the third volume in the series with monographs on 40 medicinal plants. We expect these monographs to be of use to the herbal drugs manufacturers, regulatory authorities, academicians, researchers and those interested in medicinal plants.

We are deeply indebted to Prof. S. S. Handa, Chairman and other members of the Task Force. Technical Review Committee and the Scientific Advisory Group for their enormous help. Guidance, expert advice and critical review of the contents of each chapter of this book.

It has been a challenging task and could not have been completed without the critical inputs of the Principal Investigators and facilities and infrastructure provided by heads of the various participating institutions in the conduct of the project. We thank them for their support and co-operation in bringing out this volume.

The meticulous assistance particularly by Dr. Anjali Chadha, Dr. Renu Dixit and Ms. Jyoti Bageja, the project staff under Medicinal Plants Unit, ICMR Hqrs. is gratefully acknowledged the help of Dr. M. Rajani, BV Patel PERD Centre, Ahmedabad, in making the monographs uniform and their finalization is acknowledged with thanks.

Multifaceted potential of medicinal plants, as also the fact that about three fourth of the world population relies on traditional systems of medicine to meet their primary health care needs, has generated a global interest in the area of medicinal plants. Various international agencies like World Health Organization have been emphasizing on the importance and need of standardization of herbal raw material. Lack of or inadequate quality standards of raw material has been one of the major impediments in wider acceptance of herbal drugs. It has also been a discouraging factor for many herbal drug manufacturers besides being a handicap in regulating herbal drug market. In an effort to address this problem, the Indian Council of Medical Research initiated work on the preparation of standards for herbal raw material involving several reputed research institutes in the country. This endeavour resulted in publication of the two volumes on "Quality Standards of Medicinal Plants". In continuing efforts in this direction, this is the third volume in the series containing monographs on the raw material from 40 medicinal plants. The approach being followed for executing this work is as follows:

Authentic plant material is procured from three Geographical locations. Details of pharmacognostic features, quantitative standards and phytochemical profiles are generated by the participating institutions. Information on the distribution of the plants, vernacular names, chemical constituents. Pharmacological activity, adulterants/substitutes, therapeutic claims, safety aspects and dosage is derived from the published literature and classical books. Literature search for each plant is made, reviewed and only the relevant information is incorporated from original articles.