A Study of using Foldscope as a Tool for Preliminary Evaluation of Plant Materials

摘要

Microscopy is of immense importance in the field of Pharmacognosy, for identification and detection of medicinalplant parts and adulterants in herbal preparations and crude drugs. Quality control of herbal drugs ensures safety and efficacyof the drugs used in traditional systems of medicine such as Ayurveda. Foldscope, is a lightweight, portable and durable papermicroscope developed by Dr. Manu Prakash, that provides magnification from 140x-2000x. Further magnification can beachieved using the camera of a mobile phone. The present study aims to assess the use of Foldscopein identifying medicinalplant materials from which herbal preparations are routinely formulated. Structure of stomata, stomatal number, stomatal index,vein islet number, fibre length, etc. are some of the microscopic parameters that were evaluated using Foldscope in this study.Simple and efficient handling of Foldscope along with the use of mobile phone camera to capture the images served as anexcellent in-field tool in this study. Foldscope was found to be an easy and efficient instrument for the analysis of the abovementioned microscopic parameters. Further analysis is to be carried out for comprehensive evaluation of the sample. Theauthors are thankful to the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India for providing the Foldscopes and the FoldscopeResearch Grant.