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It is well known that majority of the world population (nearly four billion) relies on the plant based drugs for health care. The efficacy and safety of these drugs depend largely on their authenticity and quality. Thus effective methods of standardization and quality control of the plant drugs as well as of these extracts are necessary.

To address this issue, Indian Council of Medical Research initiated a programme for laying down Quality Standards of Indian Medicinal Plants. Special emphasis was laid on chromatographic finger printing of the extracts and assay using phytochemical reference standard as one of the parameters of identity, purity and quality under this programme. Eight volume of Quality Standards of Indian Medicinal Plants have come out so far from this work covering a total of 274 plants. The publications are well received by Indian Pharmacopoeial Commission, Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeial Committee, researchers, pharmaceutical industries in India and United States Pharmacopoeial convention, USA.

Since the process of chromatographic fingerprinting and assay method depend on the phytochemical reference standard (PRS) compounds, it was thought worthwhile to have a repository of these PRS. Accordingly, a project on Generation of Phytochemical Reference Standards (PRS) and the Development of Repository for PRS of Indian Medicinal Plants was initiated by ICMR at Agharkar Research Institute, Pune in 2007 with specific focus on the development of method to isolate the PRS in sufficient quantities in pure form and fully characterize them by generating all the necessary physico-chemical and spectral data. UV-VIS, IR, 1H NMR and 13C NMR spectra of each PRS have been incorporated for the convenience of those who intend to isolate PRS on their own and want to confirm the authenticity of the isolated PRS by comparison with the given spectral data. Mass spectral data are also presented in some cases.