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Authentication and Chemical Fingerprinting of Economically Important Species

Ginseng being bagged for trading. Methods have been developed to chemically fingerprint ginseng extracts for the purposes of authentication and quality control. Photo: C. Leon.

In the last ten years there has been a large increase in the diversity of plant-based products entering the trade for making cosmetics, unlicensed herbal medicines, functional foods, potpourri, colouring agents and pet products.  Kew has been researching these using a range of morphological as well as chemical and DNA fingerprinting methods to identify the species of plants being traded. We have also studied whether the plant-derived products contain the appropriate range of compounds associated with their proposed use. To date, we have authenticated over 600 different species and studied the extracts of over 400 species. In most cases the correct species has been traded, although we have encountered a few incidents when the incorrect species or poor quality substitutes have been used.  However, in many cases the extracts being traded do not contain the appropriate profile of compounds that would support their proposed use.  These issues often reveal a lack of knowledge about the plants being used and the need to ensure appropriate methods are used to make the extracts.  Kew’s results have, on occasion, contributed to the drafting of new UK medical legislation, providing safeguards for public health. Other issues relate to the over-exploitation of some species, especially those that are wild harvested where there is a need to develop sustainable harvesting practises to avoid adulterants or poor quality material entering the trade.

This project aims to develop methods to ensure the herbal identity thus and improve the quality of plant-based products entering the trade. It has highlighted to internationally based commercial companies, health and conservation regulators the importance of the living and taxonomic collections at Kew as well as the taxonomic, natural product and biological expertise of the Kew staff. The main authentication project can be broken down into a series of sub-projects that deal with different commodity groups; for example, cosmetics, veterinary products, pest control, potpourri, herbal medicines (especially traditional Chinese medicines) and functional foods. The sub-projects are grouped together into one over-arching project as there is a great deal of overlap among projects and their aims and outputs are similar. The outputs of the project are being published in higher impact journals, trade journals and books, and are being used to write monographs for the European and British Pharmacopoeias. Increased synergy between this project and the conservation monitoring projects would improve the links between conservation and sustainable uses of biodiversity. Combining information from these projects could also provide support to those involved in the development of conservation strategies for over exploited economically important species, especially those that are currently obtained from wild harvested material.

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