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Metabarcoding in Herbal Product Surveillance: Detecting Adulteration and Authenticity in Multi‑Ingredient Formulations

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Preprints.org
DOI
10.20944/preprints202507.2284.v1

The increasing worldwide demand for herbal remedies has raised serious issues about authenticity, safety, and quality of commercial products, especially those made from multiple plant species. Conventional identification techniques—morphological, microscopic, and chemical profiling—are commonly found to be ineffective in identifying adulteration in the processed products.DNA metabarcoding, which is the integration of DNA barcoding with high-throughput sequencing (HTS), offers a quick, accurate, and non-destructive method for identifying the presence of plant ingredients in multicomponent mixtures of herbs. Recent advances in DNA metabarcoding, their applications to detect mislabeling, substitution, and contamination, and their restrictions like primer bias, degraded DNA, and reference database incompleteness are reviewed here. We discuss regulatory implications and how the molecular tool can enhance herbal product quality control. With expanding global herbal markets, inclusion of DNA metabarcoding within regulatory schemes presents a revolutionizing means for enhancing safety, efficacy, and confidence in herbal medicine.

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