Gynmema sylvestre - A Potentional Medicinal Herb

Gymnema sylvestre (Gs) is a well proven anti diabetic plant and used in Indian system of medicine for long period. A new variant of Gs was identified having hairy leaf. This Gs hairy variant species was subjected for pharmacognostical studies and screened for phytochemical analysis and correlated with the previous work done normal non hairy species. The leaves were analyzed for macroscopic and microscopic characteristics by taking microtome sectioning and stained for viewing in slides. The dried powdered leaf was subjected to fluorescent study using chemical reagents and viewed under visible and UV light to study the coloring pattern of the powdered particles interacting with the reagents. The powder was subjected for physicochemical studies using Indian Ayurvedic Pharamacopoeia procedure. The different extractions were done by using 100%, 50% ethanol and water. These extracts were subjected for preliminary qualitative analysis, quantitative estimation of terpenoides, alkaloids and marker compound Glycemnic acid.