Chemistry is never complete. As the popularity of pomegranate has increased, a variety of pomegranate products (such as dried juice concentrates and extracts) have become more widely available in the market for their use as health promoting ingredients. In this recent publication, researchers take a deeper dive into the chemistry behind the extensively studied Verdure brand, Pomella.

Increased popularity creates a critical need to have comprehensive characterization of botanical extracts to ensure the authenticity of the study materials used in pre-clinical and clinical works designed to evaluate their potential health benefits. Further, this characterization also aids to ensure product integrity and prevent economic adulteration.

Economic adulteration of commercial pomegranate extracts with lower-cost exogenous ingredients has been noted as a significant problem in the botanical dietary supplement industry and it has led to the recent issuance of a pomegranate laboratory guidance document for the Botanical Adulterants Program by the joint non-profit organizations the American Botanical Council, the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia, and the University of Mississippi’s National Center for Natural Product Research.

With this in mind, researchers with the Bioactive Botanical Research Laboratory at the University of Rhode Island (URI) recently published a comprehensive characterization of the patented commercial pomegranate fruit extract Pomella and a pomegranate flower extract by a validated liquid chromatography with time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry method in a highly regarded journal, the Journal of Separation Science.

In this study, seventy-one phenolics were characterized in the pomegranate fruit extract, with the vast majority also identified in the flower extract. However, only the pomegranate fruit extract contained tannin glucuronides and two punicalagin isomers (a characteristic pomegranate phenolic). The previously reported compounds, pomellatannin and punicatannins A/B, were also identified as unique chemical markers in the pomegranate fruit and flower extracts, respectively. This study will aid in the quality control, authentication, and standardization of these botanical ingredients to evaluate their potential health benefits in future pre-clinical and clinical studies.

We are honored to have Pomella on the cover of a journal that, “only accepts outstanding works,” according to the editor. The cover displays the total ion chromatograms of two pomegranate extracts, namely Pomella, a patented and proprietary pomegranate fruit extract, and a pomegranate flower extract. Editors go on to explain, “the use of analytical methods, such as liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), to comprehensively characterize the phenolics in pomegranate extracts is a definitive tool to ensure the integrity of study materials especially when they are consumed as botanical ingredients in oral dietary supplements for human health benefits.”

Check out more here:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/16159314/2018/41/15
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jssc.201800480