Most of the NuFFooDS readers, food industry, dietary supplements industry, herbal industry, pharmaceutical industry and a number of new comers into this wellness industry (many of them would be joining the startups) are looking forward to the final notification of the functional foods, nutraceuticals and supplements regulations. This final notification, whenever it happens, will open up the innovations in the health maintenance products and products for specific dietary uses and products that help to reduce risk of diseases.
A quick look at ingredients that would go into these innovations will span across vitamins, minerals, amino ac-ids, enzymes, prebiotics and probiotics and most importantly, botanicals. The last group of ingredients, coming from minimally processed botanicals and going up to standardized processed extracts, characterized group of or single components, perhaps would occupy a major basket of ingredients. This market is growing and every other day one comes to know of a new firm getting into production and supply of such botanical-based ingredients. Even the draft notification on functional foods and nutraceuticals issued by the food regulator in September 2015 had more than 500 such ingredients in one or the other schedules attached to it.
This area of use of botanicals would pose a number of challenges in their quality control and assurance (QC / QA), some aspects of which have been dealt with in a few of the earlier viewpoints in the NuFFooDS Spectrum.
A recent report on a survey of botanicals indicated rampant adulteration, as well as substitution of medicinal plants in the market. The first step of building quality, safety and efficacy in any supplement product would be to ensure the correct botanical identity of the plant and correct part of the plant being used. It is not an exaggeration if it is stated that more than 50 percent of QC / QA is achieved if the botanical identity of the plant is confirmed to be the same genus and species intended to be used.
Unfortunately, there are an inadequate number of qualified and experienced taxonomists, botanists or dravya guna experts who can per-form this role of confirming the botanical identity of the consignment received for processing and across the supply chain. Various techniques and analytical tools are involved in the identification step of the plant and its part to be used.
They are:
• Comparison with a herbarium standard
• Comparison with a reference sample of the plant / its part
• Performing pharmacognostical test (morphological and microscopic)
• Comparison of the chromatographic profile of characteristic group of compounds in the plants with the profile of a botanical reference substance issued by a standard authority.
• Confirming the DNA barcode with that of the particular plant and checking for the homology conformance.
There is no data on the level of QC / QA being undertaken by the stake holder industry involved in this sec-tor and the extent of its compliance to the requirement. This author of-ten hears that reference materials for such testing are not available. But it is not true; the sector does not perhaps invest time and energy to search for them.
Take, for example, the availability of herbariums.
A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The term can also refer to the building or room where the specimens are housed, or to the scientific institute that not only stores but uses them for research.
The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sheet of paper but, depending upon the material, may also be stored in boxes or kept in alcohol or other preservatives. The specimens in a herbarium are often used as reference material in describing plant taxa; some specimens may be types.
It is often desirable to include in a herbarium sheet as much of the plant as possible (e.g., flowers, stems, leaves, seed, and fruit), or at least representative parts of them in the case of large specimens. To preserve their form and color, plants collected in the field are carefully arranged and spread flat be-tween thin sheets known as ’flimsies’ (equivalent to sheets of newsprint) and dried, usually in a plant press, between blotters or absorbent paper. During the drying process, the specimens are retained within their flimsies at all times to minimize damage, and only the thicker, absorbent drying sheets are replaced.
The specimens, which are then mounted on sheets of stiff white paper, are labeled with all essential data, such as date and place found, description of the plant, altitude, and special habitat conditions. The sheet is then placed in a protective case.
Most herbaria utilize a standard system of organizing their specimens into herbarium cases. Specimen sheets are stacked in groups by the species, genus and family. Locating a specimen filed in the herbarium requires knowing the nomenclature and classification used by the herbarium.
How many people know that more than 45 repositories of herbarium are available globally and can be used when required? One does not need to travel too far but use your desktop PC and a net connection to search the herbarium database in India. Credit and compliments should go to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), whose vision many decades ago laid the foundation for such a database creation and the same has been achieved in the vast herbarium collection.
At present, the herbarium houses more than 21,500 specimens representing 3,254 species, 1,152 genera and 218 families of angiosperms, gymnosperms and pteridophytes. Besides technical details, habit, habitat, flowering and fruiting time of every specimen has been recorded in this herbarium for making it a ready reference and for use by the herbal drug industry for authentication of plant material.
This collection of herbarium as hard physical specimens is available at the Janaki Ammal Herbarium in the Indi-an Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM) Jammu, (formerly Regional Re-search Laboratory of CSIR). In today’s world of online searches, a large part of this database is available online on the website of IIIM, for quick reference at the click of a button. IIIM and ICMR need to be complimented for digitization of this great database, and NuFFooDS readers should visit the website and learn about the contributions of botanist Edavaleth Kak-kat Janaki Ammal, in whose name the herbarium exists.
This database is quite comprehensive, easily searchable, provides both textual descriptions of the plant, passport data of collection of the specimen and characteristic features for each specimen, apart from availability of the photograph of the specimen on the site, which makes the data base user friendly.
For the benefit of uninitiated stake holders of this sector and the new ones that would enter, the author appeals to them to ascertain botanical identity before any processing is involved or added to any supplement product, thereby guaranteeing the quality. The first step of comparison with a herbarium has been dealt with in this write up. In the subsequent ones, other aspects of this non-negotiable quality requirement will be discussed.