Abstract:
Starches are the main excipients
used in the formulation of solid oral dosage
forms and the majority of the excipients are
imported to Sri Lanka for the country’s
pharmaceutical manufacturing industry.
Therefore, research studies need to be done
on finding the suitability of the available
sources as pharmaceutical excipients which in
return would be more beneficial for the
country when making it self-reliant and
secured in healthcare. Thus, the present study
was aimed at evaluation of the
physicochemical properties of rice starch
isolated from two modified Sri Lankan
varieties of rice, in order to facilitate their
exploitation as suitable excipients for the local
pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. Two
Sri Lankan varieties of rice, BW 267/3 and BW
367 were subjected to experiments in the
present study. Starches were isolated
following the alkali extraction method used by
Valgadde et al., 2015. The starches obtained
were characterized by their physical and
chemical properties. The results showed both
the rice varieties have favourable
physicochemical characteristics in their
starches as pharmaceutical excipients while
some modifications in the isolation and
storage procedures would rather enhance
those characteristics more precisely. This
knowledge of starch properties will be helpful
in explaining the behaviour of these starches
and selecting them as necessary when used as
pharmaceutical excipients.
