Dr. Santosh Bhadkariya and Dr. Chakresh Patley

The objective of present investigation was to extract the mucilage from flower petals of Bombax Ceiba and explore its use as a promising excipient for Pharmaceutical preparation. The natural polymers have always an exceptional property which makes them distinct from synthetic polymer and Bombax Ceiba flower mucilage is one such example which shows more valuable properties making it a useful excipient for wide range of applications. Development of new excipients is time consuming, involves tedious procedures and is highly expensive. Instead, identification of new uses for the existing substances is relatively inexpensive and less time consuming. Natural gums and mucilage’s have been widely explored as pharmaceutical excipient. Mucilage’s are polysaccharide complexes formed from sugar and Uronic acid units. Mucilage’s form slimy masses in water are typically heterogeneous in composition. The flower petals of Bombax Ceiba contain a proportion of mucilage and it also being used for different therapeutic purposes. However there are no reports on isolation and characterization of mucilage of Bombax Ceiba. Hence the present study was designed for isolation and characterization of mucilage from the flower petals of Bombax Ceiba and explores its use as a pharmaceutical excipient. Various methods to isolate mucilage were tried and simple, mucilage and optimum method was developed. Physicochemical properties of Bombax Ceiba mucilage such as appearance, Odour, solubility, Bulk and Tapped Densities, Hausner’s Ratio, swelling index, pH, and Angle of Repose were studied.

DOI: 10.22271/phyto.2024.v13.i2c.14881

Pages: 215-219  |  288 Views  122 Downloads