Using herbs as medicine is the oldest form of health care known to humanity and to this day over 80% of the world population depends on herbal medicines and products for healthy living. There is increasing awareness and general acceptability of the use of herbal drugs in today’s medical practice. Medicinal plants constitute a source of raw materials for both traditional systems of medicine and modern medicine. As such they represent a substantial portion of the drug market.

Commercialization of the manufacture of these medicines to meet the increasing demand has resulted in a decline in their quality, primarily due to lack of adequate regulations pertaining to this sector of medicine. Often herbal raw materials are procured and processed without any scientific evaluation and launched onto the market without any mandatory safety and toxicology studies because there is no effective machinery to regulate manufacturing practices and quality standards. Rise in the use of herbal products has also given rise to various forms of abuse and adulteration of herbal products resulting in some instances in fatal consequences.

All drugs whether single pure drugs or multi-constituent herbal products should fulfill the basic requirements of being safe and effective. Herbal drugs are plants or plant parts that have been converted into phytopharmaceuticals by means of certain simple processes involving harvesting, drying and storage. Hence they are capable of variation caused by differences in growth, geographical location and time of harvesting. Variability of constituents in herbs or herbal preparations due to genetic, cultural and environmental factors has made the use of herbal medicines more challenging.

The quality of herbal drugs is influenced by factors not applicable to single pure drugs, such as the following:

1. Herbal drugs range from parts of plants to isolated purified constituents.
2. They consist of complex mixtures of compounds of several chemical groups.
3. The active principals in most cases are unknown.
4. Selective methods of analysis or reference compounds may not be commercially available.
5. Plant materials are chemically and naturally variable.
6. Varieties and cultivars of plants differing in chemical composition exist.
7. There is a great deal of variation in the source and quality of the raw material.
8. Methods of harvesting, drying, storage, transportation and processing (mode of extraction, extracting solvent, constituent instability etc.) have an effect.