Techniques of Mucilage and Gum Modification and their Effect on Hydrophilicity and Drug Release.

AIM: The manuscript aims to describe the techniques of modification of gums and mucilages and their effect on hydrophilicity and drug release. DISCUSSION: The interest is increased in the fields of polymers which are obtained from natural origin and used in the preparation of pharmaceuticals. Mucilage and gum are natural materials widely used in the preparation of novel dosage and conventional dosage forms. They are used in the pharmaceutical industry for various purposes like suspending, emulsifying, bio-adhesive, binding, matrix-forming, extended release and controlled release agent. Gum and mucilage are biodegradable, less toxic, cheap and easily available. Moreover, mucilage and gum can be changed to acquire tailored materials for the delivery of drugs and allow them to compete with commercially available synthetic products. These polysaccharides have unique swellability in an aqueous medium that can exert a retardant effect on drug release or act as a super disintegrant, depending on the concentration utilized in the preparation. Drug release mechanism from hydrophilic matrices consisting of gums and mucilages is based on solvent penetration-induced polymer relaxation, diffusion of entrapped drug followed by degradation or erosion of the matrix. CONCLUSION: The present manuscript highlights the advantages, modifications of gum and mucilage, their effects on hydrophilicity and drug release as well as aspects of the natural gums which can be assumed to be bifunctional excipient because of their concentration-dependent effect on drug release and their high degree of swellability.

Indian plant germplasm on the global platter: an analysis.

Food security is a global concern amongst scientists, researchers and policy makers. No country is self-sufficient to address food security issues independently as almost all countries are inter-dependent for availability of plant genetic resources (PGR) in their national crop improvement programmes. Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR; in short CG) centres play an important role in conserving and distributing PGR through their genebanks. CG genebanks assembled the germplasm through collecting missions and acquisition the same from national genebanks of other countries. Using the Genesys Global Portal on Plant Genetic Resources, the World Information and Early Warning System (WIEWS) on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and other relevant databases, we analysed the conservation status of Indian-origin PGR accessions (both cultivated and wild forms possessed by India) in CG genebanks and other national genebanks, including the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) genebanks, which can be considered as an indicator of Indian contribution to the global germplasm collection. A total of 28,027,770 accessions are being conserved world-wide by 446 organizations represented in Genesys; of these, 3.78% (100,607) are Indian-origin accessions. Similarly, 62,920 Indian-origin accessions (8.73%) have been conserved in CG genebanks which are accessible to the global research community for utilization in their respective crop improvement programmes. A total of 60 genebanks including 11 CG genebanks have deposited 824,625 accessions of PGR in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) as safety duplicates; the average number of accessions deposited by each genebank is 13,744, and amongst them there are 66,339 Indian-origin accessions. In principle, India has contributed 4.85 times the number of germplasm accessions to SGSV, in comparison to the mean value (13,744) of any individual genebank including CG genebanks. More importantly, about 50% of the Indian-origin accessions deposited in SGSV are traditional varieties or landraces with defined traits which form the backbone of any crop gene pool. This paper is also attempting to correlate the global data on Indian-origin germplasm with the national germplasm export profile. The analysis from this paper is discussed with the perspective of possible implications in the access and benefit sharing regime of both the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the newly enforced Nagoya Protocol under the Convention on Biological Diversity.