Garden Grove, CA (November 19, 2024) – Alkemist Labs, the industry leader in botanical and fungi testing, has a history of providing clarity to testing controversies. Today, the company offers perspective on the confusion about mushroom test methods, engendered by some labs marketing claims, which Alkemist’s top scientist believes are inaccurate and potentially misleading.

“Broad sweeping statements about one method that will ‘rule them all’ is premature, unprofessional, overstated, and simply not accurate unless demonstrated in a commercial environment rather than an over-simplified academic application, which is where many of the highly technological methods are best suited,” said Dr. Sidney Sudberg, Founder, President, and CSO of Alkemist Labs.

It was only 10 years ago when the industry weathered a storm created when another not-yet-fit- for-purpose test method shook things up before being discredited as overhyped and sometimes less reliable than historically established methods. And one of the weaknesses of that method remains a problem with today’s similar situation – reference materials.

“How many samples are used to build the reference database? What is the quality of the reference materials, and how has their identity been established? ” Sid asks. “We have seen many reference materials that, depending on what source they come from, have varying and conflicting ‘fingerprint data’.” 

Once an acceptable reference material is established, validation can soon follow, if a lab has an adequate level of subject matter expertise.  No matter what method is used, there is no ‘one size fits all,’ and frequently complementary or orthogonal methods add power to any given method of analysis.  The best way to determine which individual or combination of methods work equivalently for any sample of a different or specific botanical or fungi is to subject them to a single lab validation study for proof of concept.  

An expensive, sophisticated technique with advanced instrumentation that is not necessarily fit-for-purpose in routine analysis of non-academic materials is not what Alkemist recommends when there are less expensive, potentially more efficient methods that are equally as good and well established as fit-for-purpose. “It’s possible that there are other methods of analysis, e.g. NMR, that are equally powerful, but they would have to demonstrate that before claims are made, especially without adequate evidence to substantiate those claims,” Sid said.

“We recently performed a large comparison study with four different HPTLC methods comparing fruiting body and mycelia of ~12 different species of fungi and find that no one method is the ‘perfect’ method,” Sid continued.  “They each have their strengths and weaknesses, depending on the phyto or fungo-chemical constituent profiles of each individual/specific species/source and/or plant part. But the material point is that the industry should learn from past mistakes and insist on a test method being agreed upon as fit-for-purpose by a majority of testing subject matter experts in the industry before being viewed as being equally useful as a tried and true method more experienced labs are using in a commercial setting, where the sample population is quite diverse and often qualitatively compromised.”   

Alkemist’s HPTLC Supervisor Khanh Tran gave a presentation about this study at the 2024 EAS Technical Program on November 18^th: Foraging for Methods: The Right Method for the Right Spec, Khanh Tran, Sidney Sudberg, Anthony Fontana, Alkemist Labs.