The Centre for Medicinal Plants Research functions as a pioneer institute in the area of research, education, conservation and popularisation of Ayurvedic medicinal plants.

• Exploration and collection of medicinal plants from Western Ghats and adjoining areas
• Establishment of a field gene bank
• Development of herbarium and raw drug museum
• Documentation – Image library and digitised database
• Characterisation of medicinal plants conserved in the field gene bank
• Identification of superior genotypes, their multiplication and exploitation
• In vitro conservation of medicinal plants

• Survey and documentation of the traditional knowledge in medicinal plants
• Empirical verification and validation of the documented knowledge
• Developing a digital database

• Anatomical studies of medicinal plants for developing anatomical standards
• Anatomical analysis of various sources of controversial drugs and developing standards for genuine ones
• Developing microslide reference library and image data bank
• Quality checking and authentication of raw drugs for user agencies

• Phytochemical fingerprinting of Ayurvedic medicinal plants
• Phytochemical analysis of controversial raw drugs and their plant sources
• Isolation of active ingredients and marker compounds from various medicinal plants

• Development of micropropagation protocols for important rare and endangered medicinal plants
• In vitro conservation in selected medicinal plants
• Scaling up of protocols for large scale propagation
• Developing agrotechniques for the micropropagated plants
• Feasibility of production of secondary metabolites in culture
• Developing molecular profiles of medicinal plants
• Developing molecular standards for Ayurvedic raw drugs