FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF COMPOUND AYURVEDIC FORMULATION KRISHNADI CHURNA

Quality assurance is an integral part and basic requirement for all the systems of medicines to ensure their quality of the formulation. Krishnadi Churna is one of the ancient Ayurvedic formulation consisting of five simple and valuable herbs. It consists of fine powder of dried fruits of Pippal, Ajwain, Bilva and rhizomes of Sonth and Nagarmotha in equal quantities. It is used in managing of GIT disturbances, nausea, vomiting and fever. In Ayurvedic formulation the main problem is lack of quality standards, there are batch-to-batch variation in the formulation. In present communication attempts have been formulation was prepared in laboratory according to procedure given in Ayurvedic Formulary of India. The ingredients were procured locally, identified and authentication was done. Formulation was subjected to physiochemical analysis, TLC profile and botanical characterization and compared using authentic ingredients as the references. Macroscopy, Microscopy and TLC profiling complement each other for the finding of the crude drugs are present in the formulation. The data is obtained from the analysis is adopted for detection, identification of Krishnadi Churna from other powdered drug formulations.


Introduction:
Krishnadi Churna is a polyherbal traditional formulation consisting of dried fruits of Pippal, Ajwain, Bel and rhizomes of Sonth, Nagarmotha. Piper longum (Piperaceae) is indigenous to northeastern and southern India, Ceylon etc and cultivated in eastern Bengal. Dried Fruits of Trachyspermum copticum (Apiaceae) grows and is largely cultivated in eastern India, dried rhizomes of Zingiber officinale (Zingiberaceae) is native of south east Asia and cultivated in Caribbean island, Africa Australia and Mauritius, dried fruit of Aegle marmelos (Rutaceae) is indigenous to India and is found in Myanmar and Sri-lanka. Dried rhizomes of Cyprus rotundus (Cyperaceae) is found through out the India, Ceylon and other hot countries 1,2,3,4,5,7 . Ayurvedic Churna is polyherbal formulation which contains single drug or mixture of drugs 6 . Krishnadi Churna is used in digestive impairment, cough, cold, vomiting, nausea, fever. In GIT disturbances Krishnadi Churna has shown the good results 7  Rhizomes of Zingeber officinale are used in prophylaxis of nausea, vomiting related to motion sickness, post operative nausea, pernicious vomiting in pregnancy and sea sickness and mostly used in cough, cold and flu, etc 10 . 5) Ajwain.
The dried fruit of Trachyspermum copticum shows antispasmodic stimulant, carminative activity. It is also recommend for sore throat, bronchitis and respiratory related problems 9 .

Material and Methods
All the crude drugs of formulation were collected from the local market of Ujjain (M.P.). The crude drugs were authenticated by botanist Dr. Chitralekha Soni, HOD Botany Department, Vikram University, Ujjain. (M.P.). The crude drug was cleaned and made free from foreign matter. All the crude drugs were treated with water containing antimicrobial agent eg. Isopropyl alcohol (70%) and shade dried and reduced to a coarse powder in a mechanical grinder.

Morphology:
1) The dried pulp of Aegle marmelos is honey colored, slightly acrid but has agreeable taste, faintly aromatic, very sticky or glutiness in nature. Fruits are sub-globosely, 5-18 cm in diameter each contain several hairy seeds embedded in a reddish pulp.
2) The rhizomes of Zinger officinale are branched rhizomes, laterally flattened irregular branching pieces, 3-16 cm long, 3-14cm wide 2cm thick, odor characteristic and aromatic, taste pungent and externally buff colored.  (Table 2). Physico-chemical parameters of crude drugs and formulation like ash values, foreign matter, moisture content (loss on drying) and extractive values are show in (Table 3-9). The pH of formulation, Physical parameters like bulk density, tapped density and angle of repose are reported in (Table 9). The result of preliminary phytochemical screening is reported in (Table 10). Thin layer chromatographies were performed and results are tabulated in (Table 11).

Conclusion
From the present study we conclude that the quality control parameter could be used as a valuable analytical tool for the routine analysis of Krishnadi Churna. Standardization is a way to prove the quality and purity of herbal preparation and evaluation parameter is used to check batch-to-batch variation. Hence the physiochemical parameters, phytochemical tests, physical parameters, chromatography profile and microscopy characteristics together may be used for quality evaluation and the standardization of the compound formulation. These investigations are very much helpful for the identification and standardization of Churna formulations, which is useful in field of herbal drug industry for further research activities. Further quantitative instrumental methods to determine potency of Krishnadi Churna should be used to ascertain the quality of product.  Trachyspermum copticum 2.8% 4 Aegle marmelos Nil 5.