Characterization and Comparison of Three Species of the Genus Salacia.

Some of the plant species of the genus Salacia are considered as an important anti-diabetic drug in ayurveda. Among themS. chinensis, S. fruticosa and S. oblonga possess great medicinal importance, mostly because of its promising anti-diabeticactivity. The increasing demand of this drug, resulted in a huge decline in its availability and it is replaced by spurious onesmainly because of lack of adequate quality standards. There is now a felt need to develop a systematic approach for theauthentication of these plants and to develop well-designed methodologies for its standardization. The present studyfocused on the Pharmacopoeial parameters like pharmacognostical characterization and preliminary phytochemicalscreening of these three species. which were found to be sufficient to evaluate the raw material and can also be used asreference standards for the quality control/quality assurance purposes. The pharmacognostic study revealed that there arespecific diagnostic features for distinguishing these three species among themselves and also from other related species.The external morphology of these three species are also shows variation in their colour, odour and taste. Both the speciesof Salacia ie, S. chinensis is having bitter taste and S. fruticose is with astringent taste whereas S. oblonga has nocharacteristic taste of its own. The TLC profile showed similar pattern in S. chinensis and S. fruiticosa where as S. oblongashowed more band in the profile than that of the other two. This reveals that the S. chinensis and S. fruiticosa having similarcompounds responsible for therapeutic efficacy, whereas S. oblonga has more chemical constituents.