Current Status and Prospects for the Quality Evaluation of Medicinal Plants

This is a brief review and discussion for present status and prospects of quality evaluation in medicinal plants as oriental medicine materials (OMM). Quality in medicinal plants could be defined as the combination of origin, external appearance, effectiveness and safety, and be evaluated by plant taxonomic, morphological, physiochemical and biological methods. For high-quality improvement and standardization of OMM, medicinal plants should be produced through using proper species or good variety and standard cultivation method in suitable cultivation area. Standardizing of quality means to meet with minimum qualifying criteria of OMM in the market while improving of quality to be over standard quality of medicinal piano in production. For making new high quality and standardized products, we need to keep standard field plants, standard OMM, standard plant specimen, and standard compounds. Researchers and administration have to study and propose the quality factors and their evaluating techniques and criteria, so high-quality and standardized produce of medicinal plane could be produced and distributed under the control of the relevant regulations, and would be contributed to increasing of national health.

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