Indian Herbal Conference scheduled to be held in Chennai on February 13 and 14 under the patronage of Cholayil Ayurvedic Health and Research Academy will focus on present problems encountered by the medicinal plant manufacturers, plant growers, collectors and herbal drug manufacturers.

This conference will also suggest a concrete solution on how to preserve and conserve the traditional medicinal plant materials without losing its natural quality, said Dr VP Siddhan, chairman of Cholayil Ayurvedic Group and President of the herbal conference-2010..

He said even though Cholayil Group is organizing the conference in the name of Herbs for the first time, it has conducted five other national and international conferences on Ayurveda and Indian Medicines in the past. In the beginning, in the year 2000 it was held in Chennai, but in later years the conferences were conducted in Hyderabad, Vijaywada, Bangalore and New Delhi.

This time the theme of the two days conference is "preserve our natural medicines". The theme of the previous conferences was disease oriented, but this year it is based on herbs as the country is losing a good variety of raw drugs which will affect the industry also. The conference will honour two herbal growers for their outstanding contribution to medicinal plant conservation. It will provide educational opportunities for pharmacists, pharmacognosists, botanists, ethno botanists, ethno pharmacologists, plant growers and others involved in research, evaluation, development and marketing of botanicals for use in health care.

A pre conference workshop is also planned on February 12 at Cholayil medicinal plants Conservation Park at Vengalpuram near Chennai with a participation of about 1000 delegates. The participants will get an opportunity to visit the farm spread over an area of 120 acres with more than 1000 species of medicinal herbs, shrubs and trees. Live demonstration of HPTLC (high performance thin layer chromatography) finger printing of chemical constituents of the herbs, isolation methods of chemicals from plants using various extraction procedures, identification herbs by its morphological and anatomical characteristics are arranged in the workshop. The importance of organic farming also will be demonstrated in the workshop.

Retired chief conservator of Tamil Nadu, CK Sreedharan will deliver the keynote address. Dr. GG Gangadharan from FRC HT, Bangalore will inaugurate the conference.