IsoLife - Stable Isotope Labelled Plant Products for the Life Sciences

Applications  |  Authentication: Geographic Origin of Plant Products


Authenticity of the geographic origin of grapes.

Introduction

The production chain of food crops and pharmaceutical herbs or drugs provides efficient production at farm or factory level and efficient delivery to (international) trading markets. There are often weak links in this chain that are prone to counterfeiting. Unequivocal identification of products (“Authentication”) is then required. Product batches found anywhere on the market can now be linked to their place or process of origin, thus identifying the products and combating counterfeit.

Stable Isotope Solutions

IsoLife uses multiple stable isotopes for identifying or validating the origin of organic products by analysing their isotope ratios, e.g. 1H/2H, 12C/13C, 14N/15N, 16O/18O, and/or 32S/34S. These ratios strongly depend on environmental conditions during production. Combined ratios of these stable isotopes provide an accurate intrinsic isotopic ‘fingerprint’ of such products. Isotopic fingerprints offer a high potential to connect organic products to their geographical origin and biochemical products to their production process (Jasper, 2004). Since it is virtually impossible to counterfeit the isotopic ‘fingerprint’, changes in the original abundance of stable isotopes at the end of the production chain disclose legal or illegal transformations during transport from producer to consumer (e.g. smuggling tobacco).

The original ‘fingerprint’ (at the farm or factory) can be based on the natural abundance of stable isotopes or on an artificial abundance resulting from addition of labelled substrates during production.

DNA versus Stable Isotopes
DNA techniques are often used for identification purposes. Depending on the questions to be answered, both DNA and Stable Isotope techniques have their merits.

DNA: Identification of product batches based on analysis of genetic information

Examples of conclusions based on DNA-analyses:
1) “These batches contain material from the same plant variety”
2) “These batches contain material from different plant varieties”.

Stable Isotope Analysis: Identification of batches based on analysis of stable isotope composition

Examples of conclusions based on Stable Isotope analyses:
1) “These two batches have been produced at the same place/time”
2) “These products have not been produced in this geographic area”
3) “This particular batch originates from a legal production company”
4) “x% of the product found on the market is legal”
5) “This endogenous substance has been mixed with an exogenous substance” (Example Drugs ).

Typical results

The following graph shows how 6 different batches of grapes originating from The Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy (3 blue and 3 white varieties) can clearly be separated on the basis of analysis of only two stable isotopes (13C and 15N).


Reference

Jasper JP. BJ Westenberger, JA Spencer, LF Buhse, M Nasr. 2004.
Stable isotopic characterization of active pharmaceutical ingredients.
Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis 35: 21-30.

 

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