3-Day Course Overview

The consumption of dietary supplements, especially those containing plants as ingredients, have had increasing concerns related to their safety, efficacy and quality. The plants present in dietary supplements can be in the form of raw materials or extracts including essential oil and enriched phytochemicals.  Medicinal plants are often misidentified, mislabeled, substituted or adulterated. Authentication of plants and identification of adulterants are the fundamentals for quality control and quality assurance of botanicals used in dietary supplement preparations. The training courses offered by NPTL cover various aspects and techniques of botanical authentication.

Day one of the training program will cover the basics of plant taxonomy, botanical nomenclature, species identification, macroscopy, microscopy, and GC, TLC & HPTLC techniques. The participants will gain understanding of the process of species identification ant the importance of herbarium and voucher specimens, taxonomic keys and floras. There will also be discussions on, and exhibits of, authentic botanicals and their substitutes and adulterants.

During the next two days of the course, the participants will gain basic understanding as well as hands-on training on chemical analyses and various techniques involving GC, HPTLC, and HPLC/UHPLC, used in the authentication of botanical dietary supplements. There will be discussions on various topics including sample preparation, method development, chemical profiling & data processing, interpretation, and reporting.

The course will also elucidate the role of TLC, LC and GC in authenticating plant materials and provide practical tools that the participants will be able to apply to their own analytical processes. This training will help solve problems related to authentication and quality issues in real workplaces.

Upcoming 3-Day Courses

Basic 3-day course: March 11-13, 2019

Basic 3-day course: June 10-12, 2019

Advanced 3-day course: September 23-25, 2019*

*More information to come. Additional course dates TBA. For more information, please email nptl@olemiss.edu or call 662-915-1090.

Registration Details

3-day course, $2995

Fee includes training and registration, lodging, and session materials. Airfare is not included.
You will receive confirmation e-mail after completing registration.

Limit of 10 seats per course. Once course is full, additional participants will be wait-listed and will receive first priority if a seat becomes available.

3-day courses will be held from 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Monday to Wednesday.