Good Agriculture practices for medicinal plants.

Abstract

Medicinal plants have complex and variable nature. They contains small amount of defined active ingredients so that control of starting materials, storage and there processing is very important. Cultivation, harvesting and primary processing of plant materials, which are used in the manufacturing of health products and herbal medicines, are often insufficiently monitored because the quantity of such preparation is to large extend determined by the quality of the raw materials. Cultivation and harvesting of the same plays a major role. To improve the quality of the medicinal plants monitoring of cultivation, harvesting and processing of the plant material good agriculture
practices (GAP) have come in to existence. The main aim in this Good Agriculture Practices is to insure that the plant raw material meets the demand of the consumer and the standard of the highest quality. It describes general principals and provides technical details for the cultivation of medicinal plants. It also describes quality control measures, where applicable. All participants of the production process (from primary producers to traders) are required comply with these guidelines voluntarily and to elaborate practical measures in order to realize them.
Key words: medicinal Plants, GAP, quality control.