**6. Future avenues in herbal drug discovery**

In the current era, in many developed countries, priorities has been given to scientific research on medicinal plants is growing need of an hour in various research institutes, universities and pharmaceutical laboratories as well as in the clinics thereof. This research is put forward in mainly two directions: first, bioactive molecule of plants that have long been known and used for their healing properties based on the prior knowledge of the survey and literature. The second phase of basic research has led to the discovery of new medicinal plants with new bioactive molecules, new bioactivity, and new drugs from the more remote regions of the world [15].

Drugs of Ayurveda, Unani, and Siddha need scientific investigation of each and every traditional medicine, which should be put forward for testing and validation. Many government and private companies like CSIR, New Delhi, are already

involved in this filed and have validated about thousands of formulations for different activities. This is a welcome trend and it plays a vital role to correlate the traditional practice with modern knowledge for the betterment of health. WHO has emphasized the need to ensure the quality control of herbs and herbal formulations by using modern techniques. Almost many countries have their own herbal pharmacopeias and make time to time amendments for new monographs and procedures to maintain their quality of herbal products that are benefited by common man. Example Ayurvedic pharmacopeia of India includes many basic quality parameters, isolation techniques, separation, and spectroscopic identification for more than hundred common herbal drugs.
