The American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), Silver Spring, MD, held its 2013 AHPA Botanical Congress: Practical Approaches to Verifying Identity in May. Held in conjunction with the SupplySide MarketPlace Global Expo and Conference, the AHPA Botanical Congress was designed to provide guidance to dietary supplement ingredient suppliers and manufacturers that bear the burden of regulatory compliance under 21 CFR 111 (dietary supplement cGMP), which includes finished-product testing and the verification of botanical identity via “scientifically valid” methods. This year’s event provided participants with a full day of interactive and hands-on activities focused on botanical identity and available testing methods and technologies, including an organoleptic tasting exercise, demonstrations from analytical labs and equipment providers and live roundtable-style discussions with legal and regulatory experts.  

In addition to interactive discussions, participants had an opportunity to gain an understanding for the various identity methods and analytical technologies, including workshop demonstrations on how the various technologies work for many popular botanical ingredients. Workshops included interactive presentations from Botanical Liaisons, Bruker BioSpin, Camag, Grace and others. Analytical technologies and methodologies covered during the congress included organoleptic analysis, high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), flash chromatography, Fourier transform infrared and near infrared spectroscopy (FTIR/NIR) on a variety of botanical ingredients. In addition, representatives from several U.S. governmental offices (USDA, NIST, NIH-ODS) were on-hand to provide content and discuss topics, such as method development, standard reference materials and extract identification.