This post series on botanical ingredient adulteration is inspired by the excellent work coming out of the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program (BAPP) by the American Botanical Council (ABC), continuing today with:
➡️ Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) leaf extract, which is mainly used to support mental performance, circulation, and symptoms such as vertigo and tinnitus, and is also discussed for age-associated cognitive impairment, mild dementia, and altitude sickness prevention.
On the market, ginkgo is sold as whole leaf, cut leaf, powdered dry leaf, dry leaf extract, and liquid leaf extract such as tinctures. In practice, many products are standardized to the 24/6 profile associated with EGb 761-style extracts, but there are also other dry and liquid extracts with different manufacturing processes.
For companies, confirming identity is not optional; it’s a legal and ethical duty under cGMPs to verify that each incoming botanical is the right species, the right plant part, and meets agreed quality specs. Brands and manufacturers should be leaning on resources like the BAPP adulteration bulletins and implementing fit-for-purpose analytical methods, rather than relying on nonspecific tests that can miss plant-part adulteration.
Adulteration, in the regulatory sense, means a product is unsafe or of inferior quality because it fails to meet legal standards for purity, strength, or composition (including contamination).
Economic adulteration is emphasized in these posts: intentional substitution, dilution, or undeclared additions that misrepresent a botanical’s true identity or quality compared to what the label and consumer would reasonably expect. Accidental adulteration is also present in some species.
For more detailed information on adulterants in botanicals, see the BAPP publications, which are freely available on their website. To see the full Downloadable PDF post, go to it here at LinkedIN: https://lnkd.in/p/gGHh7m5S