Quality Control and Standardisation of Botanicals – From Cultivation of Medicinal Plants up to its Clinical Application

In the recent years with ever growing commercialization in the field of herbal medicines, there has been an instant demand for quality control of the drugs used in this system. In the present paper an attempt has been made for a sequential study of the quality control protocols for the herbal medicinal products from selection of medicinal plants, good agricultural practices, cultivation, good field collection practices, source and period of collection, identification and authentication, storage, chemical standardization, assay, good manufacturing practices, pre clinical studies up to clinical approach, with special reference to maintain standardization at all stages. Besides the above protocols, this study deals with approaches towards establishing the quality and safety – starting from preliminary examination of the botanicals, inadvertent contamination/substitution, morpho-anatomical, pharmacognostic, physico-chemical and analytical parameters emphasizing the limits of foreign organic matter, pesticide residue, radioactive and microbial contaminations [1]. Chemical assay and phytochemical screening of different extracts using modern extractors and recent Chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques have been described. Different stages, i.e. quality control studies of raw botanicals, method of processing, finished herbal products, standardization procedures at all stages from birth of the botanicals up to its clinical application will be discussed. Practical experiences for the identification of non-prescription and prescription synthetic chemical medicines (illegal addition) in quite a large number of recent herbal medicinal products will be described in detail. Acknowledgements: Thanks are due to ZCHRTM & HAAD, for providing facilities. References: [1] Quality Control Methods for medicinal plant materials, WHO (1998; 2007).