Worldwide re-emergence of utilization of plant-based therapies has opened up a huge potential for the herbal drug industry. There is expansive commercialization of plant-derived products for use as health foods, cosmaceuticals, nutritional supplements and as fast-moving consumer goods. It is time to take classical recipes of ayurveda, siddha, and other indigenous medical systems also to the world market as standardized, approved herbal drugs.

Medicinal plant-related trade in India inclusive of ayurvedic and herbal products has a total turnover of Rs. 2,300 crores, with proprietary preparations accounting for 1,200 crores, other formulations-650 crores and classical ayurvedic formulations contributing to the remaining 450 crores. With the worldwide demand growing annually, the Indian export market for herbal drugs is fast catching up with the domestic market.

The uninterrupted use and popularity of herbal formulations for thousands of years has made the Ayurvedic materia medica a valuable resource for modern drug development. Our great biodiversity and immense medicinal plant wealth are our assets and it is time to effectively and sustainably harvest this resource.

In our country approximately 1,000 herbal formulations prepared from around 750 medicinal plants are in regular use today. Traditionally ayurvedic physicians prepared and compounded their own formulations from carefully selected drugs. In the traditional “Guruparampara” form of education, ayurvedic physicians were well trained in the correct identification and processing into herbal drug formulations. They were at liberty to modify the classical ayurvedic formulations as per the regional availability of herbs and in accordance with the disease form in the patient.

Ayurvedic pharmacology has identified an herbs’ therapeutic utility based on its inherent qualities (rasa, guna, virya, vipaka, and prabhava) that influence the governing dosha of the individual. According to its own disease classification, the determining factor in herb selection is its quality of altering the tridoshas.

Hence, herbs in a formulation were replaceable with others of similar quality. This led to the usage and nomenclature of herbs based on their therapeutic utility. Thus, many different herbs had a common name and a single herb was referred to by different names. Differences in regional languages and dialects contributed to the so-called controversial drug names of ayurveda. Varying ecological factors such as region, climatic conditions for growth, and so on, contribute to varying properties of the source plants. In addition, interpretations of classical texts into regional languages, actual herb selection by the physician based on the properties of locally available herbs, and his actual clinical experience are some of the reasons for this nonspecific naming of plant drugs. Lapse of centuries and break of continuity led to drugs being identified with one name being replaced with other equivalents due to lack of their availability. For example, classical drugs of the Himalayan region whose supply was limited and seasonal, were often replaced by easily accessible substitute drugs. This was especially so in the case of classical herbal formulations.

Foreign rule, political instability, lack of patronage, and general attitude of our rulers to denigrate claim of Ayurveda as a science, improper communication and transportation and general decadence were some of the factors responsible for lack of sorting out of the name-drug disparity seen with traditional drugs.

The plant drug names were not considered very crucial since the knowledge was transmitted from teacher to student in the traditional education pattern in ancient India. Physicians well aware of different herbs, their habitat, morphology, and properties could thus make their own formulations and plant drug identification was just basic knowledge. Thus, ayurveda and drug formulations were innovative and dynamic with physicians carrying out their own clinical trials on local flora, thus adding newer medicines. Ayurveda also has a long history of incorporating nonnative plants into its materia medica, such as Madhusnuhı ( Smilax chinensis) from China which was incorporated into “Bhavaprakasa nighantu” as a treatment for syphilis.

It is usual to see same preparations described with altered compositions in different treatises, with each of them prescribed for different indications.

Through time, traditional physicians have long since moved into urban locales and thus individual dispensing is today replaced by large-scale production. It is now rare to find ayurvedic physicians dispensing their own medications and both physician and the patient now consider it convenient for their drugs to be readymade and available on the market much like modern medicines. Increasing urbanization, reckless exploitation of flora, massive up-scaling of individually dispensed formulae into commercially processed preparations, have all taken a toll on the quality and efficacy of ayurvedic products that are being manufactured. Today the situation is unlike the erstwhile careful and custom-made preparations, whose quality was implicit. This is worsened by the rampant commercialization seen in herbal drug manufacturing with several haphazard concoctions, cocktails, and combinations of herbs being made into convenient dosage forms. Such combinations are justified on the grounds of the so-called demonstrated pharmacological activities of individual herbs, with no regard for the actual ayurvedic therapeutic basis of drug administration. Such products are being manufactured and even exported, in keeping with the current demand for herbal drugs. These are sold across borders as health supplements and as FMCGs within the country.

Prompt pharmacovigilance enabled with today’s worldwide communications network is quick to report the adverse effects of such herbal products. These being attributed to ayurvedic drugs from India or to Indian herbal medicines is a cause for serious concern.

However, the number of adverse drug reactions formally reported or recorded in the National Pharmacovigilance Programme in India is negligible. Though their actual numbers may not be comparable with that reported for pure drugs, lack of knowledge about the concept and importance of pharmacovigilance in ayurveda among ayurvedic practitioners could be a reason.

In this scenario, it is very crucial to disseminate the right information about Ayurveda (and other indigenous herbal traditions) and its therapeutic utility to the scientific community. There is an urgent need to develop herbal drugs as ethical phytomedicines, which are standardized and whose efficacy and safety is well demonstrated

Already countries like China, Korea, Germany, and Chile are fast working to document and enrich their repositories of medicinal plant-related information and are strengthening their herbal industry base. Germany and China are in the lead in providing national health care by beneficially amalgamating traditional and modern medicine. Modern medicine graduates in China are trained in traditional Chinese medicine as part of their formal medical education. It is thus possible for traditional drugs to be prescribed as ethical drugs by modern medical practitioners in these countries.

With such an immense scope and potential for development of herbals as drugs, it is important for students concerned with drug development to have first-hand information and expertise in the identification and properties of herbal drugs