Bioinformatics Institute of India: Pharma Department

Guidelines On GFCP For Medicinal Plants Issued

The National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB), Dept of Ayush, in collaboration with the WHO's country offices for India has issued a comprehensive guideline on Good Field Collection Practice (GFCP) for India.

The guidelines focus on packaging of medicinal plant storage and post-harvest management. There are also a set of rules for harvesting and post-harvest management for specific plant parts like roots, stem bark, select mature branches of a tree or shrub, leaves, fruits and seeds, gums & resins, galls and lac.

Importance is also given to training in plant collection building.

The demand and supply mismatch is the primary reason for unsustainable harvesting and quality degradation. Therefore, NMPB has called for a baseline assessment of availability of medicinal plant produce in the wild by adopting mathematical approaches using software. Once the baseline data is available, regular monitoring can be carried out as a part of routine management, according to the guidelines report.

The Board has insisted assessment for herbal plant species which are likely to be thretened. Wherever it is not possible to arrive at sustainable level of harvest, it can be carried out with reference to supply by setting up extraction quotas, stated the report.

For specific herbal plants like Shankhapushpi, Bhringaraj, Bhumyamlaki, etc, efforts should be made for 'compaction' using, manually/ mechanically operated compactors. This would help the communities in minimizing the storage area requirments and for primary transport purposes, said the report.

In the area of storage, guidelines call for proper labelling of the container of medicinal plant produce. The label should contain all the required information of medicinal plant produce.

The efforts to develop GFCP for Indian medicinal plants, which are mainly collected from the wild, is a praiseworthy. The guidelines would contribute to improve quality and sustainable management of plants resources, Dr. DBA Narayana, herbal scientist told Pharmabiz.