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.
