KANNAPOLIS — The David H. Murdock Research Institute and Bent Creek Institute Inc., an affiliate of the North Carolina Arboretum, today announced a collaboration to provide purity and compositional testing services for the botanical natural products industry.
The new nonprofit, dubbed the U.S. Botanical Safety Laboratory, will combine the expertise and capabilities of the Bent Creek Germplasm Repository of the North Carolina Arboretum with the analytical laboratories at the Murdock Research Institute, located at the N.C. Research Campus in Kannapolis.
The two institutes will collaborate with the N.C. BioNetwork BioBusiness Center at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, which offers microbial, pesticides and phytochemical test services.
The partnership will offer clients a new resource for confirming the safety of botanical ingredients.
Other campuses of the UNC system will participate in specialized testing service offerings.
“There is a critical need for testing of botanical supplements to ensure the quality and safety of these products,” said Jim Oblinger, president of the Murdock Research Institute. “Our organizations will provide access and testing in an unbiased approach that benefits companies and consumers.”
U.S. Botanical Safety Laboratory represents an industry-first scientific collaboration among North Carolina’s institutional centers of core botanical expertise in both research and routine testing services, said Greg W. Cumberford, president of Bent Creek Institute and general manager for the new organization.
U.S. Botanical Safety Laboratory “will help serve the national need for assuring the integrity of botanical ingredient supply chains while bringing more agricultural, technical and life sciences jobs over time to North Carolina,” Cumberford said.
“Our state’s unique bio-botanical diversity and history of medicinal plant cultivation and supply is a valuable national asset that Bent Creek Institute is proud to develop through sophisticated collaborative science.”