DNA Fingerprinting for Identification and Standardization of Herbal Drugs

Herbal medicines are emerging as the bliss of the modern era for the treatment and welfare of the population owing to their safety, and minimum or lack of side effects. Keeping this perspective in mind, the quality of herbal medicines is equally important as allopathic medicines. To thwart the adulteration of herbal medicines with substandard or similar low-grade herbs is the prime objective of standardization for the maintenance of the quality of herbal medicines. Assessment of quality and purity of crude drugs using several parameters such as morphological, microscopical, physical, chemical & biological evaluation can be performed through standardization technique. A number of conventional standardization methods are available, but owing to their lackings in one or more aspects, modern standardization techniques are being opted for by many researchers nowadays. Amid all the novel standardization techniques, DNA fingerprinting method is the most important in the quality control of herbal medicines on account of its accuracy and consistency. DNA fingerprinting defines barcode-like DNA fragment patterns generated by multilocus probes after the electrophoretic parting of genomic DNA fragments. Hence, this chapter primarily emphasizes on DNA fingerprinting method as a tool for the standardization of herbal medicines.