Total Flavonoid Content, Microscopic and Microbial Evaluation of Syrian Ginkgo Biloba Products

Ginkgo Biloba (GB) is a widely used finished herbal product. Due to its natural source there is no demand to evaluate its quality before marketing. Although GB products have shown promising potential with the efficacy, many of these products remain untested. The Current work aims to evaluate some quality parameter of GB finished products like total flavonoid content (TFC), microscopic, Loss On Drying (LOD) and microbial tests in comparison with GB crude plant. The TFC ranged from (22.86 to78.74 mg/g). Microscopic findings revealed the presence of large amounts of starch grains in product A. Furthermore, most of the products were heavily contaminated with bacteria and fungi. As bacterial colony counts ranged from (103 to 7.5 × 105 CFU/g) and from (1.7 × 103 to 0.75 × 107 CFU/g) for fungal colony counts. Most of the products exceeded the reference limits for LOD. thus may pose a threat to consumer's health.