A complex botanical extract can contain dozens, sometimes hundreds, of potential constituents. That creates an obvious regulatory challenge: what should actually be identified, and quantified?

With Clitoria ternatea extract, the answer was not simply “everything we can detect”.

The useful question was: what drives the biological activity?

Fractionation work showed that the insecticidal activity remained with the peptide-containing fraction, supporting cyclotides as the biologically relevant components of interest. At the same time, the other reported constituents could be considered in terms of plausibility, background occurrence and realistic exposure.

That changes the characterisation problem.

The objective is not to produce the longest possible list of detected compounds. It is to understand which components are biologically meaningful, which are relevant to specification, and which may create a credible concern.

For complex biological substances, characterisation should follow biology, not just analytical detectability.

If you have any queries relating to the botanical biopesticide characterisation or risk assessment, our team of biopesticide regulatory experts are ready to help. Call or email and speak directly with one of our biopesticide consultants.