A thorough knowledge of the chemistry of medicinal plants is essential in
the WTO regime to understand the manifold activities of the plants, the
quality of raw materials, extracts and formulations and also to market the
plant-derived drugs. Unfortunately, this aspect is not given its due importance
in most of the treatises of medicinal herbs. Of late, there has emerged
a great interest in the constituents of medicinal plants. This is amply evident
by the recent spurt of publications in Journal of Natural Products, Phytochemistry
and a large number of journals on chemistry. Even then, a concise account
of plant products remains out of the reach of a student or a researcher who
would like to initiate work on these fascinating groups of compounds