Step 1: What is powdered lycopodium used for?
Powdered lycopodium (club moss spores from Lycopodium clavatum) is used as a standard in the spore count method for evaluating the purity of crude drugs.
Step 2: The spore count method.
A known weight of powdered lycopodium is added to a sample. By counting lycopodium spores and the drug cells under a microscope, the number of drug cells per gram can be calculated.
Step 3: The pharmacopoeial standard figure.
The accepted pharmacopoeial value is that 1 mg of powdered lycopodium contains 94,000 spores. This is a fixed reference figure used in standardisation.
Step 4: Why not the other values?
74,000 and 84,500 are incorrect figures. 9,400 is simply 94,000 with the wrong number of zeros, a common distractor.
Step 5: Conclude.
This is a specialist numerical fact from pharmacognosy that must be memorised for standardisation calculations.
Answer: Option (3) — 94000 spores