AYUSH Minister Shripad Yesso Naik inaugurated the Regional Raw Drug Repository yesterday at All India Institute of Ayurveda in New Delhi through a virtual function.

This RRDR is the second in the series of repositories proposed by National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB).

AYUSH Ministry has said that there is an increased demand for the natural healing and herbal products across the globe which has been further pushed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

There is an increased demand for natural healing and herbal products across the globe. COVID has further pushed the demand and many of the key herbs like Asvagandha, Giloi, Tulsi, Kalmegh, Mulethi are on high demand. With the increasing demand for the herbal medicines, the NMPB which is already engaged in the development of a mechanism to ensure supply of quality raw material to the AYUSH industry as well as consumers expedited the process of establishing the Raw Drug Repositories.

NMPB is already involved in the process of developing policies in this direction and for attaining speedy development in the areas of making sustainable availability of authentic raw material of medicinal plants for the AYUSH industries. In order to document the diversity in the genetics and chemistry of medicinal plants, eight RRDR and one NRDR have been proposed by the Ministry of AYUSH. Out of them, three Regional Raw Drug Repositories are ready.

RRDR for Trans- Ganga Plain Region covers four states -Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi and Punjab. This region has a huge potential for medicinal raw materials. Therefore, this RRDR would play a stellar role in collection, documentation, and authentication of raw drugs collected largely from the respective agro-climatic region.

NMPB also released a protocol titled “Standard protocol for Quality assessment of Raw Medicinal Plants Material on the basis of Rasa in collaboration with All India Institute of Ayurveda, New Delhi and National Institute of Ayurveda, Jaipur.