India has the highest density of HPTLCs (High performance thin layer chromatography) instruments in the world. Almost every research or testing laboratory in the government and private sector has invested in HPTLC to allow more accurate quantitative measurements specifically in herbal products, said Dr Eike Reich, Director (Lab), Camag, Switzerland and Member of committees of USP, BP, PhEur, ChP.
 
Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) is also a technique to identify chemical and herbal compounds to determine purity. But HPTLC is the most advanced form of TLC and comprises chromatographic layers of separation efficiency. “Unlike a single compound medicine, the chemical composition of plants is complex. Therefore, HPTLC should be Indian herbal industry’s lab reference point. It meets all quality requirements of analytical labs in a stringent regulated environment,” he added.
 
Recently, Dr Reich was in Bengaluru for a seminar organised by Anchrom and spoke on ‘HPTLC Fingerprint: The regulatory method for identification of materials of botanical origin’.
 
“In order to assess the degree of complex compositions in plants and to increase its purification, the importance of HPTLC cannot be ignored,” he said.
 
“As HPTLC is widely used for botanical identification to monitor the quality of plant origin at a globalised level, it is now important for the Indian herbal industry to simplify analysis. There is also a significant focus on herbal monographs, detection of adulterants and impurities which is proving to be a challenge. Although there are a suite of tests for herbal monographs, we see HPTLC results are easy to achieve and it is a reference point for quality control,” he said.

In a globalised setting, identification of a given plant species needs to be performed using the same method. Standard methods benefits laboratories. With the government of India’s efforts to promote traditional medicine in a big way, the HPLC installations across the country will help in faster validation and consistent reproducibility of results from lab-to-lab because it is an established analytical method.

The industry is now working to ensure compliance in research tests and the magic solution is only standardisation to maximise capability. Recently USP has also mandated that only HPTLC should be used to identify products of botanical origin. Since India is already known to have the highest density of HPLC in the world, it is ideal for the industry to visualise the quality of herbal material, said Dr. Reich.