S25 - Session P3 - Testing botanicals in human or animal health and welfare: objective assessment of the available literature is a key element for successful studies

Authors: Annabelle Bergoend *, Denis Bellenot

Countless papers examine the effects and biological activity of botanicals in various fields. A closer look reveals that even though precise results are obtained, the botanicals' specification is often unsubstantial and insufficient to allow a proper replication of the studies. This highlights the need for detailed description of the botanical(s) which represent the material being evaluated, whatever the field of study (human/animal health and welfare, crop protection, etc.). With several thousand plant species considered medicinal, and with as many studies investigating plants biological activity, selecting a plant for a new study can be tricky. To help clarify these matters and provide a step-by-step method to non-specialists of plant extracts, we describe here a replicable method to achieve the followings: - conduct a proper bibliographical search to retrieve a pool of relevant publications - rigorously analyse this pool to decide which plant(s) to test in a new study; this includes the assessment of the quality of papers regarding proper plant extracts. In the context of a project aiming at developing a method to evaluate the capacity of botanical extracts to promote natural defences in poultry, we selected databases to conduct bibliographical research. After selection of specific keywords for each database, more than 500 publications were obtained. A quantitative method and a qualitative method were applied to obtain a list of the plants that were investigated in the publications and to know which species had been the most studied. Then, we developed a scoring grid to objectively evaluate the quality of the phytochemical characterization of the botanicals tested in the publications (i.e., scientific name of the species including variety and/or chemotype when relevant, part and quantity of the plant used, preparation of the extract, etc.). Our method is applicable to any type of study that relies on testing the activity of botanicals.