Compendial Perspectives on Botanical Identity Testing (Sarma et al., 2026) did an excellent job breaking down what different identity methods offer. The timing is also notable given the work that is happening with different working groups, like the update to AOAC BIDSI's App K and the new cycle of the USP Expert Panel on Botanicals. I would highly recommend anyone working in this space to read it.
The paper really captured my attention, as it does an excellent job breaking down good agricultural and collection practices, as well as what different identity methods offer and why they matter. Identity is the linchpin for quality or repeatability in studies.
The Genomic Methods section was especially interesting to me. It directly addresses the ways in which PCR is used in identity testing. It also discusses the limitations of PCR-based methods, such as degraded DNA leading to unreliability in processed products. The issues of using the legacy system of first-generation DNA barcoding methods are legitimate, and the distinction that we at LeafWorks view these approaches listed as legacy methods here matters.
The industry has historically relied on barcode approaches, and through that lens, the risks described in the paper — that DNA degrades, it does not work well in processed products, and there are no curated botanical databases leading to significant limitations — are valid. First, predecessors used unreliable databases and methods that involved blindly comparing non-species specific sequencing reads to those databases. Since then, the industry has turned to DNA barcoding because it is convenient, but not reliable to meet commercial needs for processed products in today’s market. It also suffers from comparison to uncurated databases. As a result, misconceptions and myths around what DNA can do for botanical identity testing as a whole continue to be broadcasted. The reality is that these DNA systems were simply not built for commercial identity testing needs. And it’s because of these hurdles that LeafWorks has spent the past 9 years building a new solution. The limitations of previous generations of DNA technology are simply no longer reflective of the modern genetic technologies now available to the industry because of the work we have done to solve them.
This is where I see a responsibility for LeafWorks as a company and for me personally: helping the industry understand what modern genetic methods actually enable today.
For example, the ITS2 barcode has been shown to achieve ~92% species-level identification success across thousands of medicinal plants (Chen et al., PLoS One 2010). That work was foundational. It helped establish DNA as a viable identification tool.
But when barcode methods are applied to real commercial materials — especially processed or multi-ingredient products — performance can drop significantly. Some studies evaluating powdered and blended herbal products have reported genus-level resolution as low as ~55% (Urumarudappa et al., 2020). For companies needing defensible species-level verification for label claims, supply chain validation, and regulatory compliance, that gap is meaningful.
At LeafWorks, we recognized from Day 1 that these approaches would not be sufficient. So we built what didn’t exist—designing methods specifically to overcome those historical constraints. We target species-specific genomic regions and support them with large, curated reference databases built from scratch using vouchered, authenticated botanical reference materials. This work has been accelerated by a rare partnership with the Missouri Botanical Garden (the fifth largest herbarium in the world) and industry partners and validated extensively across real-world commercial matrices. Our protocols are built to handle degraded and processed DNA, which is why we consistently obtain species-level IDs in materials historically considered “too processed” for DNA analysis.
The key takeaway for me is that the next phase of this industry is education: separating legacy barcode-era limitations that rely on a single gene and PCR (and comparing them against ambiguously built databases) from what is now possible with purpose-built genomic testing platforms.
Just like chemistry, not all DNA methods are created equal. HPTLC isn't the same as FTIR or NMR. There are many different ways to apply genomics and the gap between first-generation barcoding and modern genomic testing is far larger than most people realize. You can expect more from me and LeafWorks on this topic throughout 2026 as we work to change the perspective of what we have to offer. I hope that the distinction between our methods and others’ will garner as much excitement for the next generation of botanical identity testing as we feel at LeafWorks.
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Compendial Perspectives on Botanical Identity Testing.
Nandakumara D. Sarma, Maria Monagas, Gabriel Giancaspro, Josef A. Brinckmann, James Harnly, James Kababick, Holly Johnson, Pilar Pais, Stefan Gafner, Zhengfei Lu, and Robin J. Marles
Journal of Natural Products Article ASAP
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.5c01200 -
Validation of the ITS2 Region as a Novel DNA Barcode for Identifying Medicinal Plant Species.Shilin Chen, Hui Yao, Jianping Han, Chang Liu, Jingyuan Song , Linchun Shi, Yingjie Zhu, Xinye Ma, Ting Gao, Xiaohui Pang, Kun Luo, Ying Li, Xiwen Li, Xiaocheng Jia, Yulin Lin, Christine Leon. PLoS One. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008613
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DNA metabarcoding to unravel plant species composition in selected herbal medicines on the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) of Thailand.Urumarudappa SKJ, Tungphatthong C, Prombutara P, Sukrong S. Sci Rep. 2020 Oct 26;10(1):18259. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-75305-0. PMID: 33106579; PMCID: PMC7588419.
