Garlic Oil Quality Assurance: Techniques for Verifying Natural Sources

Is Your Garlic Oil for Pasta Natural and Safe?

Due to the low extraction rate of natural garlic oil (approximately 0.2%), it is often referred to as "liquid gold" and commands a high market price. In contrast, synthetic garlic oil is significantly cheaper, with prices only one-fifth or even lower than that of natural garlic oil. As a result, adulteration can significantly reduce costs and increase profits.

In the quest to ascertain the purity and safety of garlic oil, the utilization of advanced detection methods is pivotal. Specifically, the discussion revolves around two vital analytical techniques: carbon-14 (C14) analysis via accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). These methods serve as paramount tools to differentiate authentic, pure natural garlic oil from blends containing artificial additives.

Challenges in Global Garlic Oil Demand

Understanding the challenges inherent in the global garlic oil industry sheds light on the significance of authenticating purity. The industry's reliance on concentrated cultivation in China makes it susceptible to price fluctuations, intensifying the need to ensure the authenticity of garlic oil sources.

Garlic oil, also known as garlic essential oil, is highly coveted in the food industry, lending its flavor to various meat, savory, and vegetable dishes. Its widespread use extends into the nutraceutical sector, featuring prominently in numerous dietary supplements due to its valuable antibacterial, antibiotic, and antioxidant properties.

The rising demand for natural food and supplement products aligns with health-focused lifestyle trends. Influential figures in the wellness sector significantly impact what consumers prefer to purchase. Consumers willingly pay more for products labeled 100% natural, believing them to be "cleaner" and healthier, based on various studies. This drives many brands to meet this profitable trend. However, obtaining botanical extracts and plant oils involves multiple suppliers globally, making it challenging to trace their origins accurately.

The global demand for raw garlic and its derivatives faces challenges due to concentrated garlic cultivation primarily in China. This geographic concentration renders the industry susceptible to supply-side price fluctuations. For instance, India's National Horticultural Board documented a sudden 40% surge in prices during the final quarter of 2015, affecting both wholesale and retail markets. This spike resulted from an unexpected surge in demand and compromised crop yield caused by untimely rainfall that year.

In China, the garlic industry witnessed a surge in both consumption and prices between 2009 and 2010, spurred by theories suggesting garlic's effectiveness against the swine flu epidemic. Subsequently, prices soared in 2015-2016, doubling due to a challenging growing season and subsequent financial speculation. The consistent upward trajectory in raw garlic prices has contributed to the escalating cost of garlic oil production, as it requires a substantial quantity of garlic bulbs.

Environmental Impact on Garlic Oil Production

Environmental regulations in China have significantly impacted garlic oil production. Factory closures and soaring operating costs have led to market shortages and inflated prices, underscoring the necessity of stringent authentication methods for purity assessment.

The escalating costs of garlic oil production have been markedly influenced by heightened environmental regulations in China. These regulations, implemented over recent years, resulted in the closure of numerous factories. For the surviving plants that chose to comply with these stringent regulations, operating costs soared considerably. The repercussions of the closures in 2016 continue to reverberate in the market, leading to shortages and inflated prices. Presently, production remains insufficient to meet the prevailing global demand for garlic oil.

Quality Concerns and Market Trends in Garlic Oil

Given the increasing value and demand for genuine garlic oil, there is a heightened risk of adulteration and mislabeling within the market. This poses challenges, especially within the lower-priced segment, making it difficult to distinguish authentic garlic oil.

Throughout 2017, Berjé Inc., a notable essential oils producer, released monthly reports on the essential oil market, highlighting ongoing quality concerns within products labeled as garlic oil. In their August 2017 report, the company observed a surge in low-priced offers for "Garlic Oil" that failed to meet qualification standards upon testing. Additionally, Berjé emphasized the persisting issue of poor quality and the continuation of high prices for acceptable-grade products.

By October 2017, Berjé reported a historic escalation in the cost of high-quality garlic oil, noting a remarkable threefold increase in bulb prices, reaching 4.4 RMB/kg.

Amid widespread economically driven adulteration and mislabeling, manufacturers face significant quality assurance hurdles. Beta Analytic, an ISO 17025-accredited lab specializing in testing ingredients like extracts, essential oils, and flavoring compounds for their natural sources, discovered that roughly 70% of the samples analyzed yielded outcomes consistent with 100% natural sourcing. Situated in Florida, this facility serves stakeholders in the food and supplement industries concerned about escalating adulteration. Astonishingly, nearly a third of the materials tested showed, through carbon-14 analysis, complete or partial derivation from fossil fuel substrates. This suggests that substances labeled as "natural" might have mingled with synthetic petrochemical-derived elements somewhere in the supply chain.

Hence, producers and subsequent distributors of premium ingredients frequently turn to third-party testing to ensure compliance with consumer expectations when labeling items as "100% natural." Focusing on garlic oil, Wans Chemicals examines the practical application of two widely employed analytical methods used to authenticate ingredient sources: carbon-14 (C14) analysis via accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS).

Analytical Methods for Authenticating Garlic Oil

The focus on analytical methods, such as carbon-14 analysis and GC-MS, becomes crucial in authenticating garlic oil. While GC-MS delineates the chemical composition, offering insights into volatile compounds, AMS effectively differentiates between plant-derived sources and synthetic additives.

Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) stands as one analytical technique used to characterize garlic essential oil composition. Essential oils, being intricate blends of numerous volatile compounds, are effectively dissected through GC-MS analysis, showcasing the relative quantities of each constituent. This analysis provides insight into the chemical composition and can generate a unique chemical fingerprint for a sample. However, drawing definitive conclusions about authenticity necessitates comparing results against an internal database or a reference sample. Occasionally, variability in natural composition and extraction methods might render results inconclusive. Moreover, variations in machine parameters can influence outcomes, complicating the comparison of GC-MS results between different laboratories.

In contrast to GC-MS analysis, Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) distinguishes between plant-derived and fossil-derived sources by measuring the carbon-14 content in a sample, rather than isolating individual constituents. Biomass derived from recent living organisms, like plants, animals, and microbes, contains a measurable amount of the radioactive isotope carbon-14. Fossil fuels such as petroleum lack any carbon-14 due to its relatively short half-life of 5,730 years.

The process involves comparing the measured carbon-14 amount in a sample against an established standard that represents the carbon-14 content found in contemporary biomass. This comparison allows for precise determination of the percentage of a material sourced from recent living natural sources (% biobased) versus mineral sources like petroleum (% fossil). Notably, while carbon-14 analysis cannot distinctly authenticate an essential oil by differentiating between various plant sources, it serves as an effective screening tool for identifying petrochemical adulteration. This is particularly valuable as synthetic substitutes, usually much cheaper than natural alternatives, are commonly employed. AMS analysis aids in effectively detecting potential adulteration with petrochemicals.

Testing garlic oil samples using both GC-MS and AMS analytical methods was a focal point of a study conducted by Beta Analytic, a carbon-14 lab, in collaboration with two separate GC-MS laboratories. While the GC-MS analysis consistently indicated a chemical profile aligning with that of natural garlic oil across all samples, the AMS analytical results revealed that only one