Monographs on certain species of Leptadenia, Hedyotis and Aerva

Dr. Denni Mammen,faculty in Chemistry,The M.S. University of Baroda,completed his M.Sc. in Organic Chemistry. He pursued his doctoral studies on medicinal plants, nutraceuticals, analytical method development and validation. He has 21 research papers in journals of national and international repute to his credit and two ongoing research projects.

This book is an attempt to build a comprehensive monograph of three important medicinal plants, Aerva lanata which is referred to as Bhadra, Hedyotis corymbosa as Parpatakah, and Leptadenia reticulata as Jivanti. Ayurvedic texts attribute high medicinal values to these plants and regard them in high esteem. Important parameters such as proximate analysis, phytochemistry, micromorphology, anatomy, powder study, HPTLC fingerprint analysis, isolation and characterization of phytochemicals have been included in this book. Another inportant factor studied is identification of key pharmacognostic and phytochemical markers of the three selected plants in comparison to the respective adulterants, which is a universal problem plaguing the herbal drug industry worldwide. Effect of change of season and location of harvesting of plants is often neglected. Variation in phytochemicals due to seasonal and geographical changes have been extensively studied for the selected plants. Modern instrumental techniques have been employed for the studies along with classical methods of analysis.No monograph can be complete in itself. This work is an attempt to fill the lacunae in the existing monographs.