Herb and Spice Adulteration Testing Service

To protect the interests of consumers, reduce the risk of food fraud, help manufacturers or enterprises establish their brands, ensure the accuracy of product labelling and thus food safety, Alfa Chemistry has developed a testing platform that would thus provide our clients with the one-stop herb and spice adulteration testing service.

The world market for herbs and spices is worth US$4 billion. Herbs and spices have a wide range of applications. They are not only widely used for flavoring foods and beverages, preventing food deterioration, but also have medicinal properties. Studies have shown that the biologically active ingredients in spices and herbs are related to the prevention of inflammation, cancer and other diseases.

Due to economic benefits and increased demand for these products, the problem of adulteration of herbs and spices has become increasingly prominent. Common adulterations include: 1) Substituting low-priced commodities or unrelated species with similar appearance to replace high-priced herbs and spices; 2) Mixing herbs/spices of different geographical origins or types, but not stated in the food label; 3) Incorporation of other foreign matter, such as talcum powder, ground walnut shells, sand, wheat starch, wood chips, etc.; 4) Incorporation of illegal dyes, such as Golden Orange II. Adulteration of herbs and spices may destroy the nutritional and medical value of herbs and spices, and may even threaten the health and safety of consumers.

With people's pursuit of a high-quality life and increased health awareness, more and more high-quality herbs and spices are in demand, whether for health, cooking or cosmetics. Therefore, the rapid detection of herbs and spices is particularly important. Alfa Chemistry has developed an herb and spice adulteration detection platform, which can customize targeted solutions according to different samples and customer needs. We can analyze the origin, quality and authenticity of herbs and spices to ensure food safety and quality. Consumers have increased demand for traceability of herbal and spice product traceability. We can also perform detailed chemical analysis for manufacturers, companies and other products to help your product labels be more detailed and accurate, and help build brands. We strictly abide by the quality assurance/quality control plans and regulatory requirements of each country and region to provide you with support.

Herb and Spice Adulteration Testing Platform

• Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-High resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS) merged with chemometrics: Quantitative and qualitative detection of herbs and spices, analysis of mixed substances.
• Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (1H-NMR) combined with chemometrics (PCA, OPLS-DA, O2PLS-DA): Quality and authenticity testing of herbs and spices.
• Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) along with principal components analysis (PCA) and canonical discriminant analysis (CDA): The isotope composition and multi-element analysis can identify the geographic origin of herbs and spices.
• Sequence feature amplified region polymerase chain reaction (SCAR-PCR) and DNA barcoding detect adulteration of herbal and spice substitutes.
• Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy analysis: Qualitative and quantitative analysis of organic matter in herb and spice.

Turnaround Time: 7-10 working days.

At Alfa Chemistry, our analytical scientists are experienced in herb and spice adulteration testing. After communicating with you about the testing scheme, we will implement it within a quick turnaround time and provide you with an analysis report. If you have any questions or specific needs, do not hesitate to contact us.