Production of crude drugs
1- Cultivation
2- Collection.
3- Drying.
4- Packing.
5- Storage.
1-Cultivation of Crude Drugs
Medicinal plants are either grown:
Wildly (wild plants) or
Cultivated (cultivated plants).
 Plants grown in native land are called “Indigenous”
e.g.: Aconitum napellus in the mountains of
to this land
Napellus in Europe
 When plants grow in a foreign land they are called
e.g. : Datura stramonium introduced from Europe
“Naturalized”
to U.S.A.
Advantages of cultivated plants:
1- Concentration of a large number of plants in a small area thus simplifying
collection.
2-Cultivation assures a regular and constant supply and helps to break down monopolies.
3-Control of the purity of the drug by avoiding adulteration.
4- Improvement of the drug by controlling
certain factors in cultivation as:
a) Treatment of seeds before sowing to ensure germination.
b) The use of fertilizers which increase the active constituents of the plant, by providing the essential
elements for plants nutrition such as N2 , K and P.
c) Controlling insects infestations.
Disadvantage of cultivation
1
1- The cost of production except when carried on a large scale.
2- Some medicinal plants require imitation to
particular habitat, e.g.
•
Cannabis requires a tropical climate for
•
Cinchona requires damp hot weather.
•
Aloes require a heavy rain fall.
the production of narcotic resin.
Disadvantages of wild plants:
1- Difficulty in collection; as wild plants are found in sparse distribution over unlimited area.
2- Difficulty in transportation; as wild plants are mostly growing in
deserts or forests.
3- Continuous extensive collection may lead to extinction or a serious deficiency of the plant.
4- Adulteration; collection of crude drugs from wild sources may lead to
ignorance of collectors who may collect:
adulteration due to
a- A species other than the required one.
b- Another plant organ.
c- Collection at improper time.
5- The collected amount of wild plants may
lead to monopoly.
be insufficient for the market needs and
may
2- Collection of Crude Drugs
•
The qualitative and quantitative composition of plants may change greatly during the course
of growing season, time of the day and stage of maturity.
•
To ensure maximum quality of a crude drug, it must be collected at a proper stage of
development.
•
Factors Affecting Collection
2
•
A)Time of the year
•
1-Rhubarb contains anthranols in winter and anthraquinones in summer.
•
2- Colchicum corms have no alkaloids in autumn but rich in alkaloid in spring.
B)Time of the day:
1- Digitalis leaves collected in the afternoon contain more glycosides than those collected in the
morning.
2- Solanaceous leaves have higher alkaloidal content in the morning than those collected in the
afternoon.
C) Stage of maturity:-
1- The unexpanded flower – heads of Santonica contains 3% of anthelmentic principle called
“santonin”. When the flower heads start to open, the santonin percentage starts to decrease.
2- All Solanaceous leaves contain higher alkaloid content when the plant is in the flowering stage.
3- Authentication of plant material
This may be confirmed by:
1- Establishing the identity by a taxonomy experts.
2- Collection of a common species in their expected habitat by
a field botanist. ‫مكانها األصلي‬
3- By comparing the collecting plant with a voucher specimen
3
(herbarium sheet)
Herbaria (herbarium)‫تجفيف النبات‬
Herbarium is a representative whole plant or organ of plant which is preserved to provide a reference
specimen when required.
Information on the herbarium sheet include:
1-The name (including synonymous names).
2-Date and place of collection.
3-Any field notes that the collector could
gather the information including their:
use and toxicity (if any) should be recorded
on the so called “Herbarium sheet”.
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