ASAVARISHTAS THROUGH IMPROVED FERMENTATION TECHNOLOGY

Asavarishta is a very popular dosage form in ayurvedic medicines. It is a unique liquid dosage form that contains self generated alcohol, often referred as medicated wine. This self generated alcohol is produced by method of fermentation. Asavarishtas are manufactured by industries in batch size of thousand liters. Larger batch sizes of process specific products for high technology are the need of the time. The large scale industrial fermentation must produce high yields of product at least possible expenses and the recovery of product must be more. Thus the research is required to adapt the fermentation to existing types of fermentation equipment and to increase the yield of product. As self generated alcohol content should not exceed 11% v/v the fermentation process should be at a controlled rate and should be monitored precisely. Many times contamination by microorganisms during process of fermentation takes place if proper care is not taken during fermentation which is hazardous to product. Incubation time required for fermentation depends on temperature of environment. The temperature varies seasonally affecting the rate of fermentation. Shorter incubation period is desirable to produce a greater yield. Many times fermentation process is prone to contamination because of foaming as vigorous fermentation produces more amount of carbon dioxide. Such aspects should be considered in quality enhancement of asavarishtas by modifying existing fermentation procedure.