Brief discussion on the development and course of plant extract in China

Plant extract refers to substances extracted or processed from all or part of plants as raw materials using appropriate solvents or methods, which can be used in the pharmaceutical, food, daily chemical, and other industries.

There is a conceptual crossover between plant extracts and Chinese herbal extracts. The raw materials of plant extracts in China mainly come from Chinese herbs, so domestic plant extracts can also be called Chinese medicine extracts to some extent, and are generally included in the category of Chinese medicine products in China’s export trade statistics. Traditional Chinese medicine mainly consists of plant medicine (root, stem, leaf, fruit), animal medicine (viscera, skin, bone, organs, etc.), and mineral medicine. Because plant medicine accounts for the majority of Chinese medicine, so Chinese medicine is also called Chinese herbal medicine. At present, there are about 5000 kinds of Chinese medicine used in various places, and the formulas formed by combining various medicinal materials are countless. After thousands of years of research, the formation of an independent science – herbology.

Plant extract is a product formed by taking plants as raw materials and obtaining and concentrating one or more active components in plants through physicochemical extraction and separation process according to the needs of the use of the extracted final products, without changing the structure of its active components.

Market supply and demand

There are many different varieties of plant extracts, and the supply and demand of these products change constantly with the year and various market factors, and the imbalance between supply and demand occurs from time to time.

① Product supply impact: Because the raw materials of the plant extract industry are agricultural and forestry products, which are easily affected by weather, pests and diseases, seeding area, and other factors, the purchase price and quantity of raw materials in different years will fluctuate, and the price fluctuations of raw materials will make the price and output of natural plant extract products change to a certain extent, resulting in an imbalance between market supply and demand.

(2) Market demand impact: most production enterprises have limited understanding of overseas market demand, and may lack scientific and long-term accurate judgment of market demand. When the market demand for a product is good, there will be a short-term market imbalance in short supply, but with the spread of market information, a large number of enterprises will rush to repeat production, resulting in an oversupply of products.

Development course

China’s plant extracts from the Chinese medicine industry, the overall development time is relatively late. In the 1970s, some Chinese herbal medicine factories began to use mechanical equipment to extract active ingredients, but only as part of production, plant extracts were not yet mass-produced. Until the 1990s, with the rise of the international trend of returning to nature, people began to tend to use natural plant products, during this period, China’s foreign trade rose, and China’s plant extract industry gradually the good. In the 21st century, with the application of more advanced extraction methods such as enzymatic extraction, ultrasound, supercritical extract, membrane separation technology, and microwave extraction technology, the yield of extracts has been greatly improved, and China’s plant extract industry has entered a golden development period. During the period from 2010 to 2015, the production capacity and export volume of plant extracts increased steadily and rapidly every year, and the proportion of plant extracts in Chinese medicine exports also increased a lot. Since 2016, the market situation of plant extracts has undergone some changes.

Classification and application

1. According to the content of active ingredients, it can be divided into three categories: effective monomer extract, standard extract and ratio extract;
2. Glycosides, acids, polyphenols, polysaccharides, terpenes, flavonoids, alkaloids, etc.;
3. According to the product form, it can be divided into vegetable oil, extract, powder, lens, etc.
4. According to the use, plant extracts can be divided into natural pigment products, traditional Chinese medicine extract products, extract products, and concentrated products.

Apply

The application range of plant extracts has been very extensive, in addition to traditional Chinese medicine products, with the gradual increase of people’s trust and dependence on natural products, a large part of plant extracts have been used in health care products and food ingredients. In addition, plant extracts have been used in cosmetics and feed in recent years.

Some of the best-selling plant extract varieties in the world have several categories, such as Rhodiola rosea, ginkgo biloba, ginseng extract, etc., used in the field of brain health, education, prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease; Green tea, fructus aurantii, apple, and bitter melon polypeptide extract are used to reduce weight, reduce blood sugar and prevent diabetes; Paclitaxel, tea polyphenols, theanine, bioflavonoids, such as lycopene, anthocyanins, etc. are used in natural anticancer fields; Licorice, garlic, Astragalus and soybean extracts are used in the field of the human immune system

Alkaloid 

It is a kind of complex nitrogenous organic compound, which has special physiological activity and medical effects. For example, ephedra contains ephedrine for asthma treatment, and scopolamine contains scopolamine for spasmolytic and analgesic effects.

Glycoside

A combination of sugar and non-sugar substances. In the sugar part, different types of aglycones have different physiological activities and various functions. For example, digithuang leaves contain cardioside, which has a strong cardioside effect, and ginseng contains ginsenoside, which has the effect of invigorating qi, promoting fluid and calming nerves.

Essential oil

Also known as essential oil, it is an oily liquid with aroma and volatility, composed of a mixture of various compounds, with physiological activity, and has many functions in medical treatment, such as cough, asthmatic, sweating, antipyretic, expectorant, wind-driven, analgesic, antibacterial and so on. Among medicinal plants, the content of volatile oil is rich, such as Platyphelus lateralis, Magnolia officinalis, Cinnamomum officinalis, Angelica angelica, peppermint, etc.

Tannin

A mixture of polyphenols. It exists in a variety of plants, especially in Salicaceae, Fagaceae, Polygonaceae, Rosaceae, legumes, myrtle, and Rubiaceae. The gall from the medicinal plant Rhus chinensis is called gallnut. It contains gallnut tannin and has the effect of astringent, antidiarrheal, and antiperspirant.

Other ingredients

Such as sugars, amino acids, proteins, enzymes, organic acids, fats, oils, waxes, resins, pigments, inorganic substances, etc., each has special physiological functions, many of which are important drugs in clinical practice.

Industrial separation technology

1) Resin separation technology. Resin technology has been successfully used in industrial decolorization, environmental protection, drug analysis, antibiotic extraction, and separation. It has also been applied to the separation and concentration of phytochemical components with great success. For example, for ginkgo biloba leaves, the current resin separation technology can achieve a collection rate of 90% of ginkgo biloba flavonoids; Ginkgo flavones can be concentrated at one time so that the content of more than 50%; It is also possible to remove most (more than 99.5%) of the harmful components of ginkgo acid, so that it is less than 5ppm, while the loss of active ingredients is controlled below 3%.

2) Industrial extraction technology.

Includes:

① organic solvent extraction technology;

(2) Carbon dioxide supercritical fluid extraction technology, which is a process introduced in the 1990s, is the use of liquid CO2 under high pressure (350-500 bar) to extract plant active ingredients, the resulting product purity, high yield, and pollution-free extraction agent. However, due to high working pressure and high equipment requirements, only the pilot level is achieved at present;

③ New chlorofluorocarbon solvent extraction, such as the British recently invented “Klea” (HFC134α, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2 tetrafluoromethane) inert solvent, can be extracted at low-pressure room temperature, saving energy, but also avoiding thermal damage.

3) Analysis and detection technology: extracts of traditional Chinese medicine require quantitative analysis of the criterion ingredients and harmful substances, comparison with standard products, identification by fingerprint, and strict testing of raw materials, production process, and finished products. Taking the Natural Sunshine Company of the United States as an example, a total of 150 tests have been carried out from raw materials to finished products. Therefore, in the quality control of Chinese herbal extracts, modern analytical instruments are essential, and HPLC is the most widely used, while GC, HPCE, GC-MS, HPLC-MS, UV, and atomic spectroscopy, and other methods and instruments are often used. According to statistics, about 75% of the extracts of Chinese medicine were detected by HPLC, while only 10.9% of the products in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia were detected by HPLC. Enterprises with lower technical levels often do not have instrumental analysis capabilities, and commercial enterprises rarely have these conditions.

Technical standard

At present, the vast majority of plant extracts do not have national standards or industry standards, enterprises are mostly based on the quality clauses in the contract as the basis for product delivery, and product quality detection methods are more chaotic, which brings obstacles to production and management, and challenges the development of the industry. A small number of enterprises in the industry have initially established enterprise technical standard systems: medicinal material quality standards and extract quality standards, medicinal material planting procedures, extract production process procedures, and inspection procedures. The Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation has approved the research on “quality standards for import and export of single flavor plant extracts”, which is expected to put forward a set of standards for the industry.

Based on the scope and concept of legislation and the use of various countries, the concept of plant extracts can be accepted and recognized by all countries, and it is also a common expression for the dissemination of herbs in all countries. China’s export of plant extracts as early as 1999 has exceeded the export of proprietary Chinese medicine. In Europe and the United States, plant extracts and their products (botanical medicines or food supplements) have a wide range of market prospects and have developed into an emerging industry with annual sales of nearly 8 billion US dollars.

China’s plant extracts are generally intermediate products with a wide range of uses, mainly used in medicines, health food, tobacco, cosmetics raw materials, or accessories. The types of raw material plants used for extraction are also very large, and more than 1,000 plant varieties are currently entering industrial extraction.