TRAINING

The Laboratory can provide training to individuals or organisations in the testing of herbal medicines as per pharmacopoeial standards as well as in thin layer chromatography (TLC) for finger printing of the raw drugs or marker compounds, in assay of the chemical compounds and in HPLC techniques. It also offers training in evaluation of products for microbiological contamination (bacteria and fungi). The user groups can thus build capacity in the area of Quality Control and Standardisation of herbal medicine.
Students from the United States and local schools and colleges obtained exposure to techniques used by the Lab for researching Traditional Medicines. Various NGOs, including from Bangladesh, SSUs from Mangalore were trained at our laboratory. A complete tailored and interactive training programme as per the requirement was imparted by the staff of the laboratory for the NGOs and SSUs in QC techniques

Phytochemical section
The laboratory is equipped with all the basic equipment for physico-chemical analysis, extraction, chemical analysis, and assay of chemical compounds by volumetric, gravimetric, spectrophotometric, HPLC & HPTLC techniques. Thin layer chromatography facilities for finger printing of the herbal medicine or the marker compounds are available for confirming the identity and authenticity of the medicine.

Biology Section

Microbiological Testing

A full-fledged microbiology section exists for testing bacterial and fungal contamination of herbal material with sterile testing facilities (Laminar flow hood). The laboratory has a collection of 8 spp. of fungal and bacterial cultures.

Biological Assays

Anti microbial tests and a time saving and economical bioassay method using brine shrimps for evaluating biological activity of the herbal medicines are carried out for a preliminary screening of drugs.

Molecular Biology Section

Seed fund provided by the Ministry for Environment and Forest, Govt. of India for studying the Genetic Diversity and Pharmacognosy studies of Medicinal Plants. The main purpose of this project is in identification of medicinal plants. By using molecular biology techniques such as DNA isolation and PCR, it is envisaged to develop DNA Fingerprints of some important but controversial plants. Further it is also proposed to develop DNA markers for authenticated medicinal plant(s), which would help in confirming the identity of a plant or plant-derived products.