Research Journal of Pharmacy and Technology

Medicinal plants constitute an effective source of traditional Ayurvedic system, with increasing believe and demands in Ayurvedic medicines, the adulteration in medicinal plants has also became a burning problem in the pharmaceutical industry. Adulterations is a practice of substituting original or genuine drugs with similar looking drugs which have different chemical constituents and therapeutic properties, thus producing useless or harmful substance with intention of enhancement of profit. It may be due to wrong identification, deliberate mixture of other drugs, lack of knowledge about authentic plants, non availability, similarity in morphology, careless collection and any other unknown reasons. Proper identification of medicinal herbs/plants play vital role in producing authentic genuine Ayurvedic drugs. The identification of important drug is must, if someone fails to identify the genuine drug the Ayurvedic formulation goes wrong due to adulteration; efficacy and potency of medicines goes down and also leads to variety of complications, adverse effects from mild to severe life threatening conditions. Correct identification and usage of genuine drug is very important to reduce the adverse effect and maximizing consumer's safety. In this paper different adulterated forms of Maricha (Piper nigrum L.), such as Eranda karkati (Carica papaya L.) Sandhyaaraaga (Mirabilis jalapa L.), Chavika/Kankola (Piper cubeba L. f.), Shatavari (Asparagus racemosus) and Nirgundi (Vitex Negundo) have been discussed in order to differentiate genuine drugs and adulterants through diagnostic characteristics. These could be used as an adulterant due to similar morphology, non-availability of requisite material and improper identification of genuine drugs.