Use Of Chemical Profiling With Chemometric Analyses For Authentication Of Botanical Products

Current quality control approaches of establishing identity specifications are not only required for compliance with good manufacturing practices (GMP), but for prevention of economically motived adulteration. Botanical authenticity is classically achieved by examination of diagnostic macroscopic and microscopic features for minimally processed biomass; however, modern ingredient supply chains are often far removed from classically identifiable material and traded as highly processed plant powders. The continuing demand for high quality, authentic products in the marketplace, has significantly outpaced research efforts to produce reliable analytical methods that verify botanical identity for these highly processed materials. The use of chemical profiling coupled with chemometric analyses shows promise as an approach for establishing the authenticity of botanical products. Technologies for acquisition of plant chemical profiles have developed rapidly in conjunction with new analytical tools for chemical separations, mass spectrometry, and NMR spectroscopy have emerged. Key factors in using plant metabolomics data effectively are experimental design, availability of reference materials, sample preparation and selection of statistical analyses performed. There exists a need to evaluate approaches to delineate sources of variance, including preprocessing of datasets. This talk will demonstrate practical experiences in the development of methods using phytochemical profiling for characterization and authentication of botanical materials as a GMP requirement. Botanical materials such as Echinacea, Panax, Hydrastis and Crataegus species based on NIR, HPLC and NMR plant metabolite acquisitions will be used to illustrate the utility of multivariate models to characterize and authenticate botanical materials.