Evaluation of Physicochemical Properties of Starch from Two Modified Sri Lankan Rice Varieties to Be Used as Excipients in the Pharmaceutical Industry

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.