Plant Extracts

Plant extracts refer to the use of plants as raw materials, in accordance with the needs of the final product, after the extraction and separation process, directed to obtain or concentrate one or more of the components of the plant, generally does not change the original composition of the plant and the formation of the product. According to the need can also be supplemented with excipients made of powder or granules with good fluidity, moisture resistance, but also a small amount of liquid or oily form of products.

Plant extracts can be divided into simple extracts, quantitative extracts, standardized extracts, and purified extracts according to the process and intrinsic quality; solid extracts, liquid extracts, soft extracts, etc. according to the product form; and single extracts, compound Chinese medicine extracts, and component extracts according to the composition and nature.

Plant extracts market development history

In the early 1980s, the basic completion of industrialization in Europe and the United States and other developed countries set off the trend of returning to nature, people have side effects of the chemical synthesis of the product concern and exclusion gradually rising, the natural, safe plant extracts return to the good sense, greatly respected, the industry should be the trend of the rise of the 1994, the United States enacted the “Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act,” officially recognized the acceptance of plant extracts As a food supplement use, plant extracts industry developed rapidly.

China has a long history of traditional Chinese medicine, and medical personnel have emphasized the analysis of plant properties and medicinal properties since ancient times. In the 1970s, some domestic pharmaceutical factories began to use mechanical equipment to extract plant ingredients, but this was only as a production link in the manufacture of drugs, and did not develop into an independent industry. after the mid-1990s, with the deepening of openness to the outside world, foreign trade began to flourish, and the plant extract industry, which is subject to fewer constraints by the policy, began to develop.

Since the 21st century, the plant extract industry has entered a golden period. This stems on the one hand from the strong demand for plant extract products driven by the improvement of living standards and health awareness; on the other hand, it benefits from the application of more advanced plant extraction technologies (e.g., enzyme extraction, ultrasonic extraction, supercritical extraction, microwave extraction, and membrane separation technology, etc.), which greatly improves the production efficiency.
According to Innova, the global growth rate of food and beverages using botanical ingredients reached 8% between 2014 and 2018. The market researcher identified Latin America as the main growth market for the segment, with a CAGR of 24% during this period, followed by Australia (10%) and Asia (9%).

Among the market categories, sauces and dressings accounted for the largest market share, with this segment accounting for 20% of the global new product market share for botanical ingredient applications in 2018, followed by ready-to-eat foods and side dishes (14%), snacks (11%), meat and eggs (9%), and bakery products (9%). In addition, the sports nutrition segment emerged as the fastest growing market category for botanical ingredients, driven by the growth of botanical supplements, which grew at a CAGR of 25% in 2018, followed by the alcoholic beverages category at 22%.

Application Scenarios of Botanical Extracts

Plant extracts are diverse and functional, and one extract often serves different purposes, but can be broadly classified into five categories: coloring, flavor output, pharmacological effects, and healthcare functions.

3.1 Coloring: Phytochrome is the main component of plants presenting color, and some plants are unusually rich in pigment, which can be used for pigment extraction. There are dozens of plant pigments available in our country, such as curcumin, safflower yellow, radish red, beet red, sorghum red, and paprika red.

3.2 Flavor output: plant extracts are often rich in characteristic components that can effectively stimulate the senses, such as sweeteners and volatile substances. Natural sweeteners are now popular new sweeteners, which not only have outstanding sweetness, but also are ideal substitutes for sucrose, and their health effects are significant. Examples include stevioside and rosmarinic acid sweet glycosides. Essential oils are concentrated volatile substances, which are commonly used in the preparation of spices, and are also the industry with the lowest threshold of application in plant extracts, with the least restrictive regulations.

3.3 Pharmacological effects: the use of herbal preparations has a long history, more prosperous in Asia, and in recent years, driven by the concept of traditional Chinese medicine, is now renowned worldwide.

Chinese medicine formulated granules: by single-flavored Chinese medicine tablets by water extraction, concentration, drying, granulation and become, in the Chinese medicine clinical formulations, for the patient to flush the use of Chinese medicine formulated granules is a supplement to the traditional Chinese medicine tablets.

Chinese medicine extracted raw materials: it refers to the extraction and separation from traditional Chinese herbs or natural plants, with clear drug active ingredients, the content of which reaches more than 90% of a single active ingredient, with a drug approval number, which can be used as raw materials for Chinese medicine preparations; as well as traditional Chinese medicines or natural plants as raw materials, extracted and separated from the preparation, which can be used as the raw materials of chemical preparations of the following main products: Pennyroyal, Paclitaxel, Cimicifuga alkaloids.

Standardized Chinese medicine extract: It refers to the volatile oil, grease, green dip, running dip, dry dip, active ingredient, active part and other ingredients which are listed in the prescription of the national drug standard for pCms and have a separate national drug standard and are used in the feeding production of pCms. It mainly refers to the extracts of traditional Chinese medicines included in the item of “plant oils and extracts” of Pharmacopoeia, and 47 kinds of plant oils and extracts are included in the 2015 edition of Chinese Pharmacopoeia.

3.4 Health care function: the components in plant extracts include glycosides, acids, polyphenols, polysaccharides, terpenoids, flavonoids, alkaloids, etc. These components have been proved to be biologically active in the research, and have non-negligible efficacy on human health, and the development of their health care function has become the mainstream trend of application of plant extracts.

3.5 Dietary supplements: Prebiotics refer to organic substances that are not digested and absorbed by the host but can selectively promote the growth and reproduction of bifidobacteria and other beneficial bacteria in the body of the host, so as to improve the health of the host. The structural characteristics of prebiotics are: neither hydrolyzed nor digested in the gastrointestinal tract. Can not be digested and absorbed; can selectively stimulate the growth and reproduction of beneficial bacteria in the intestinal tract and activate their metabolic functions; so that the intestinal flora in the direction of the host’s health; can induce local or systemic intestinal immune response that is conducive to the host’s health.

Most prebiotics used as food additives, such as inulin (from chicory), FOS (oligofructose. (from inulin, chicory and sucrose), glucomannan (from konjac), soybean oligosaccharides, dietary fiber, and tree resin, etc., are all derived from plants.

Pain points in the industry

Strong market demand has led to the rapid development of the industry, but there are still many problems that need to be solved.

The first is the restriction of regulations, each country has different requirements for plant extracts, and the application of products varies, for example, dietary supplements are mainly used in North America; health products and botanical medicines are mainly used in Europe; and traditional Chinese medicine and food additives are mainly used in China. The quality standards of plant extracts are vague, and the differences in use directly affect the applicability of raw material types, and only those categories that meet the requirements can enter the market, which is more restrictive.

Second is the uneven distribution of industrial processing, because of the limitations of technical conditions, China is mainly based on crude extracts, while the depth of development by the technical and regulatory constraints, the development is not ideal, and lack of competitiveness in the international arena.

The third is that the supporting system is not perfect, plant extracts is China’s new industry, the vast majority of which do not have the corresponding production standards and norms, the lack of effective implementation of regulatory, product quality varies, in the industry standardization of the road there is still a long way to go.

Curcumin as an example: curcumin is a hot functional food ingredients, especially in the North American market is developing rapidly, curcumin has covered dietary supplements, beverages, cosmetics and many other areas, and in the country is mainly used in food coloring agents, and its functional food, although it has also been on the market, but the registration and approval of the time is longer, and the enterprise development costs are higher. Recently, in the health food excipient list additions to the draft comments, it is proposed to list turmeric powder as a health food excipient, although still set the maximum amount of use, but for the application of turmeric powder has a great role in promoting.