Title : Global challenges in safety, quality, and adulteration of herbal products used in daily life

Herbal products, botanical preparations, and plant-based nutraceuticals are increasingly integrated into daily healthcare practices worldwide owing to the growing demand for preventive healthcare, natural therapeutics, functional foods, and wellness-oriented lifestyles. The global expansion of traditional and complementary medicine, particularly in the post-pandemic era, has significantly accelerated the consumption of herbal supplements for immune modulation, stress management, metabolic health, and chronic disease prevention. Despite their widespread acceptance and commercial growth, significant concerns persist regarding the safety, quality, authenticity, efficacy, and regulatory oversight of herbal products across international markets.

The globalization and commercialization of herbal products have led to increasing incidences of adulteration, contamination, species substitution, and mislabelling. Several international investigations have reported the presence of synthetic pharmaceutical adulterants, undeclared steroids, artificial colorants, pesticide residues, microbial contamination, and toxic heavy metals including lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury in herbal formulations and botanical supplements. In addition, phytochemical variability arising from geographical origin, cultivation conditions, harvesting practices, processing technologies, and storage environments presents substantial challenges in achieving batch-to-batch consistency and standardization.

Analytical evaluation and authentication of herbal materials remain scientifically complex due to the multi-component nature of botanicals and the absence of universally harmonized quality standards. Conventional and advanced analytical techniques such as Ultra-Performance Liquid Chromatography (UPLC), High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography (HPTLC), Liquid Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), DNA barcoding, metabolomics, spectroscopic fingerprinting, and chemometric approaches are increasingly employed for quality assessment and adulteration detection. Furthermore, emerging applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are transforming the field of herbal sciences by enabling rapid botanical authentication, predictive toxicology, intelligent supply-chain traceability, real-time risk surveillance, and AI-assisted natural product drug discovery.

Dr. Ajai Prakash Gupta is a senior officer with over 35 years of experience in analytical chemistry, pharmaceuticals, food safety and herbal products. He currently serves as Director (Deputation), at FSSAI, New Delhi, and is also associated with CSIR–IIIM, Jammu.

Dr. Gupta has made significant contributions to laboratory accreditation and quality systems and is a NABL Assessor for ISO/IEC 17025:2017 and ISO/IEC 17034:2016. He is a J & K FDA-approved Quality Control expert for pharmaceutical and herbal products.

At the international level, Dr. Gupta is actively engaged with AOAC International (USA) as a Member of Expert Review Panels and Working Groups, contributing to the development and review of analytical methods for dietary supplements, contaminants, pesticides, heavy metals, acrylamide, ethylene oxide, and botanical identity verification etc.

Dr. Gupta has authored 136 peer-reviewed publications, 13 book chapters, and 5 patents, with an h-index of 37. He is a reviewer for leading scientific journals in analytical chemistry, pharmaceuticals, food chemistry, and natural products etc.