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Synopsis The interest in and the demand for the plant based drugs increased in the last few decades, and this led to large scale commercial production of both classical and proprietary herbal formulations in the country.  As a result, the demand for herbal raw material also increased.  The raw material is being procured from wild as well as cultivated sources.  Several factors are known to influence the quality of the herbal raw material.  Hence, to maintain quality and to ensure efficacy, quality parameters are to be defined.  Sensing this need, the Indian Council of Medical Research initiated a programme to develop monographs on important Indian medicinal plants involving several research institutes and laboratories of the country.  The monographs so evolved are being published under a series.  So far two volumes of "Quality Standards of Indian Medicinal Plants" have been published which contain monographs on 32 medicinal plants each. This is the third volume in the series with monographs on 40 medicinal plants.  We expect these monographs to be of use to the herbal drugs manufacturers, regulatory authorities, academicians, researchers and those interested in medicinal plants.  Work on preparing monographs on raw materials from many more medicinal plants is in progress.