The Regional Raw Drug Repositories (RRDRs), aimed at facilitating quick collection, documentation, and authentication of raw drugs, have been set up at the All India Institute of Ayurveda, New Delhi, and the National Institute of Siddha, Chennai.

The AYUSH Ministry had proposed to establish a total of eight RRDR and one NRDR (National Raw Drug Repository) to document the diversity in the genetics and chemistry of medicinal plants.

The RRDR, New Delhi, will be dedicated to the Trans-Ganga Plain Region (Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi and Punjab) while the facility at Chennai will serve the Southern plateau region.

There is an increased demand for natural healing and herbal products across the globe. Covid-19 has further pushed the demand and many of the key herbs like Asvagandha, Giloi, Tulsi, Kalmegh, and Mulethi are in high demand. With the increasing demand for herbal medicines, the NMPB which is already engaged in the development of a mechanism to ensure supply of quality raw material to the AYUSH industry as well as consumers expedited the process of establishing the Raw Drug Repositories.

The outreach and acceptability of AYUSH systems, both nationally as well as globally, are dependent on uninterrupted availability of quality medicinal plants based raw material. Though most of our raw drugs are commonly available, there is a lack of scientific documentation which makes research on these medicines very difficult.  This also reduces the chances of commercial exploitation of these medicines. Easy availability of authentic scientific data of the raw drugs will promote the research on the medicines belonging to the AYUSH system which will lead to further propagation of these systems.

NMPB is already involved in the process of developing policies in this direction and for attaining speedy development in the areas of making sustainable availability of authentic raw material of medicinal plants for the AYUSH industries.

NMPB also released a protocol titled “Standard protocol for Quality assessment of Raw Medicinal Plants Material on the basis of Rasa in collaboration with All India Institute of Ayurveda, New Delhi and National Institute of Ayurveda, Jaipur.