Ayurvedic drugs are yet to be recognized as valid system of healthcare in the US. Authenticity and purity are issues holding up the expansion and acceptability of these drugs globally, stated S Venu Gopal, CEO and APCCF, Karnataka Medicinal Plants Authority (KMPA).
Although, India accounts for 11 per cent of the biodiversity of the world, with long tradition of herbal medicines, its share in the world's herbal market is just one percent. This is where pharmaceutical education and research sector will have a strategic long term role to play to create the required human resource for the development of herbal sector.
Global trends reflect the popularity of herbal products as medicines, cosmetics or nutrition. There is good demand for organically grown products with a good price.
"We are aware of the issues which are holding back the growth of herbal industry at the national and international markets which have its genesis in the good manufacturing practices, sustainable harvest of raw materials, quality initial processing at the farm level, stated Gopal at the International Herbal Conference 2009, held recently in Bangalore.
Storage facilities to prevent deterioration, availability of authentic raw materials, credibility to provide unadulterated, uncontaminated, authentic quality products are some of the key factors which need ample focus.
There are also issues compounded by failure to provide viable competitive price to farmers which will motivate the growers to take up cultivation of medicinal plants on a large scale. Although the final product commands a good price both in the international and national market, there is a lopsided share of value, which are inimical to farmers but are favourable to middlemen, exporters and industries, stated KMPA chief.
Therefore, there is need for State government intervention to provide the farmer cultivating medicinal plants to provide a good price which alone will encourage sufficient production of quality raw materials. Around 80 per cent of herbs are used for industry procurement.
India has a long tradition of using medicinal plants for the health. In fact, the country is known for two of the 12 mega bio-diversities of the world. These are the flora of the Western Ghats and the North East. Although there are 47,000 plant species available here only 6,200 plant species are utilized in the health system in which Ayurveda alone has a mention of 2,351 plant species and folk medicines with a record of 5,137 species. Siddha system of medicine uses plants to an extent of 1,785 species. Unani, homoeopathy and Tibetan medicine also dependent plants for drug resources. Allopathy drugs uses 204 species. For the development of drugs for the difficult diseases and future lies in the belly of plant diversity, stated Gopal.
Turnover of the herbal industry is Rs 8,800 crore which uses about 960 plant species of which 178 are of high volume exceeding 100 metric tonnes a year.