This Service offers the morphologically or genetically identification of any plant, seed or vegetal sample. Picture: Simon Feiertag, www.ethno-botanik.orgThe Botanic Institute of Barcelona (IBB), a joint center of the CSIC and the Barcelona City Council, launched less than a year ago a new Plant Certification Service that offers the morphologically or genetically identification of any plant, seed or vegetal sample. Teresa Garnatje, a CSIC’s scientist at this Institute, explains that the customers of this service can be farmers, plant nurseries, herbal shops, producers and distributors of seeds or medicinal herbs, among many others.
The identification service can go from the morphological analysis in the easiest cases, when identification is possible with the naked eye, until the molecular analysis. The latter allows scientists to certificate not only the species, but also the degree of hybridization or clonality of the variety, strain or lineage.
As an example, says Teresa Garnatje, “in the case of breeders and producers of fruits or medicinal herbs, they can be interested in knowing which lineage of the plant will have more active molecules“. Also, they can find out the genetic variation in clones, self-crossings and grafts, which is a relevant information for agricultural practices.
The molecular analysis allows to certificate the degree of hybridization or clonality of the variety, strain or lineage
The seed identification service is also requested by producers and distributors of seeds to avoid the so called “contaminant” seeds. In the laboratories of the Certification Service of the IBB it is possible also to identify the vegetal species that form part of the ingredients of any food product or drug of vegetal origin, as well as the proportions.
The service can also assess about the uses and properties of the plants, as well as in environmental subjects such as impact studies, characteristics of invasive species, population viability of threatened species, conservation strategies…
They offer training in techniques of molecular analysis and applied and basic research (food, pharmaceutical and industrial sectors).
Three possible cases
The requests arrived to the Plant Certification service are numerous and diverse, as there are as many as the customers can raise. Three examples are explained here.
‘Infiltrated’ plants into sterilized products. A company of products for medical care found small parts of plants in the product packs. Apparently, they had accidentally been placed between the paper and the plastic of the sealed packet. The place where ‘contamination’ was produced it was no clear because the paper for the packaging was produced in France but printed in Spain, and the product was packaged in Asia. In order to discover it, the service of the IBB was required. The goal was to find out using molecular analysis, whether the fragments of plant belonged to the Asiatic or the Mediterranean flora.
Seed packs. Sometimes, seed packs can contain few unexpected seeds, which don’t belong to the species or variety indicated. Identification can be done in a statistic sample of seeds using molecular techniques to pinpoint the type and the proportion of the contaminant seeds.
Finding out the ingredients of a product. In the laboratories of the Plant Certification the scientists can identify which plant species are part of the ingredients of foods, drugs or other products of vegetal origin. This information can be useful for importers or distributors.
Contact:
http://www.ibb.bcn-csic.es/certibb
e-mail:
Passeig del Migdia s/n (Parc de Montjuïc),
08038 Barcelona,
tel. 93 2890611