Natural Remedies of Bangalore, which was selected by Department of AYUSH to work on SOPs and pharmacopoeia standards for extracts of ayurvedic, siddha and unani drugs has received an annual grant of Rs 10 lakh to complete 5 monographs. This will include all expenditure till the final approval by the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeial Committee (APC) and documentation of the monographs.

The decision to select Natural Remedies for this centrally sponsored project came about because its R&D centre is recognized by the Department of Science and Industrial Research (DSIR) and accredited by Department of Ayush. The company is also one of the few in the country to have a comprehensive PRS (phytochemical-reference standards) that helps to increase the quality standards of Indian herbal products and medicinal plants.

Under the project for the development of monographs on ayurvedic medicinal plant extracts, the company is engaged in providing the SOPs for 5 drugs. Its lab has to procure raw materials from different sources and to make the extracts complying with API standards. It has to make three batches of both aqueous and hydro-alcholic extracts of each of the 5 drugs. It was also indicated by the department of Ayush that in the extracts, the aqueous and the hydro-alcholic (Eythyl alcohol) ratio would normally be 50:50 but could be changed accordingly to 70:30 which was to be accompanied with a detailed explanation by the company.

Natural Remedies has been instructed to generate the data according to the format approved by the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeial Committee (APC)which will be a closely guarded information as per the conditions issued by the Department of Ayush.

The company will have to send the sample of the extracts to PLIM, Ghaziabad which is the co-coordinating lab along with the scientific data supporting the findings. Further PLIM would tabulate the data and also send the samples of the extracts to the RPL, Jammu or other labs to counter check the scientific data. In addition, PLIM would also conduct random verification of the data by repeating the experiment. The tabulated results of PLIM will be placed before the APC for approval, stated RK Agarwal, chairman and managing director, Natural Remedies.