The international trade in plants is growing steadily as the worldwide demand for natural and botanical raw materials increases. Customers value natural products and botanicals as "green" alternatives—safer ingredients for their families which also represent an environmentally and socially responsible choice for the planet. In order to build assurance into the sourcing of natural ingredients, R&D organizations must have valid scientific matrices to authenticate the quality of those ingredients, provide traceability, and minimize risk. An assemblage of insight from expert contributors, Botanicals: Methods and Techniques for Quality & Authenticity compiles a range of methods and techniques that can be used to help guide quality and authenticity determinations.

Topics include:

• Metabolic profiling, authentication of botanicals by morphology, and genetic methods of botanical authentication



• Tools for building models for the authentication of materials



• How multivariate statistics can play a role in determining botanical quality and authenticity



• Radiocarbon and stable isotope ratio analysis and emerging stable isotope tools



• NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy, NIR (near-infrared), and HPTLC (high-performance thin-layer chromatography) methods for analysis



• The use of electronic sensing instruments and applications for analysis

The contributors also discuss the challenge of identifying a botanical extract or preparation on the basis of its chemical content and discuss quality issues faced by botanicals used as cosmetic ingredients. The book provides you with a range of traditional, taxonomic, and newer analytical tools to assure the quality, authenticity, and traceability of botanical raw materials for dietary supplements, cosmetics, and natural products research.