Medicinal plant extracts are complex mixtures containing many compounds.
Their therapeutic properties may be due to the cumulative or synergistic effects of
contained compounds. The adulteration or substitution of the herbal products especially
food supplements is crucial problem in herbal products industry. Adulteration or
substitution may be deliberate or accidental. Valuable herbal products are substituted
with similar low quality products and used as adulterant which may or may not have
any therapeutic potential as that of original product. The quality control studies are
very important to provide active, high quality and safe food supplement. Therefore,
fast, specific, accurate, inexpensive, and high throughput analytical methods are
needed. Some chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques are used for identification
and quantification of bioactive compounds, impurities, contaminants, and also other
compounds present in the food supplements. The chromatographic fingerprint analysis
offers significant advantages in analytical methods because of the complex and multi
component matrix of the food supplements. Screening of the content and quantification
of food supplements can be possible in a single fingerprint run.
Keywords: Adulteration, Food supplements, Quality control.