SHORT REVIEW ON DNA-FINGERPRINTING AND STANDARDIZATION OF HERBAL DRUGS

Abstract

Medicinal plants play a key role in world health. In spite of new advances developed in modern medicines, herbal formulations are extensively used as therapeutic agents for treatment of several diseases. Herbal drug technology is used for converting botanicals materials into medicines. Standardization is a process of evaluating the quality & purity of crude drug by various parameters like morphological, microscopical, physical, chemical &biological observation. Fingerprint analysis approach is the most important in quality control of herbal medicines because of its accuracy and reliability. DNA fingerprinting is defined as the application of genetic/ molecular marker techniques which is used to identify cultivars. Fingerprinting is a process as it determines the concentrations of chemical substances in an herb by several methods like RFLP, AFLP, RAPD, SSR sequencing of rDNA-ITS region and DNA bar-coding. Development of fingerprints based on DNA markers is necessary for proper identification and standardization of plant species.