Quality Control Of Medicinal Plant Extract

In order to investigate the main factors that influence the quality of medicinalplant extracts, we established testing methods for six plant extracts including Grapeseed extract, Soy bean extract, Echenecia extract, Rhodiola extract, Bilberry extract,and Pine bark extract in our study on their qualities and their produce process. Wefound that there are two main factors that influence the quality of final products. One isthe quality standard and produce process and three examples were given from differentaspects: Grape seed extract shows that different standards led to different produceprocesses, Soy bean extract shows that different produce processes led to differentpercents of ingredients and Echinecia extract shows that different test methods lead todifferent quality of final products. The other one is the identification of plant speciesand the inner ingredients and also three medicinal plants extracts were used tosupportthis conclusion: Rhodiola extract indicates that different genus contain differentingredients, Bilberry extract shows that the contents of the active ingredients indifferent species is different, and Pine bark extract shows that not only the species butalso the plant part used will influence the final product.At the same time, main classical plant extracting methods and testing methodswere summarized, current situations of Medicinal plant extract in domestic andinternational markets were analyzed, and the quality control of 20 plant extracts whichhave reasonably good sales in inter-market were compared and analyzed in this thesis.Six cases were illustrated to study the two main factors leading to the variedquality among different suppliers. One factor was that the Medicinal plant speciesutilized by different companies were different. The other one was that the extractingprocesses were different from different company. It was suggested thatchromatography and chromatographic fingerprint techniques should be applied toimprove the quality control of plant extracts.