The herbs & botanicals industry is shifting toward higher-quality, evidence-backed ingredients, says our roundtable panel of experts.
The panel:
Andrea Zangara, Scientific Communication Advisor, Euromed, Spain, www.euromedgroup.com
Brian Zapp, Director of Marketing, Applied Food Sciences, Kerrville, TX, https://appliedfoods.com
Christopher Bailey, PhD, Director, Technical Business Development, Vidya USA, Bunnell, FL, www.vidyausa.com
Cosimo Palumbo, Chief Operating Officer, Indena USA, Seattle, WA, www.indena.com
Devendra Soman, Marketing Director, Nisarga Biotech Ltd., India, www.nisargabiotech.com
James Roza, Chief Scientific Officer, Layn Natural Ingredients, Irvine, CA, https://layncorp.com
Jason Katsoris, Director of Ingredient Sales & Business Development, Bio-Botanica Inc., Hauppage, NY, www.bio-botanica.com
Steve Fink, Vice President, Marketing, PLT Health Solutions, Morristown, NJ, www.plthealth.com
The herbs and botanicals market has quickly become one of the VMS category’s primary drivers, with demand for plant-based ingredients driving sales across the board. Consumers are increasingly turning to botanical ingredients for everything from metabolic health to healthy aging to gut health and more. Emerging botanical ingredients are finding new ways to overcome challenges associated with older botanicals while becoming more sustainable in the process. Suppliers are working hard to combat adulteration, using supply chain levers to ensure quality product. As the botanicals market grows, expect more market opportunities for lesser-known herbal and botanical ingredients. Here’s what our panel of experts had to say about the state of herbal and botanical ingredients in 2026.
NIE: What is the state of the market for herbs and botanicals?
Zangara: The botanicals category is no longer a niche corner of the supplement aisle. It has become one of the industry’s primary growth engines: global demand for plant-based ingredients is on track to push the market past $60 billion this year, with Asia-Pacific posting the fastest regional growth.1 What has changed is the buyer, not just the volume. Consumers now want proof behind a botanical claim, and that rewards suppliers who back an extract with well-defined specifications and standardization, clinical evidence, and traceability from field to finished ingredient. Single-botanical extracts still dominate, but well-documented combination formulas are growing faster than the category average.
Zapp: The market for herbs and botanicals is undergoing a fundamental shift toward higher quality, proven efficacy, and clinical evidence. Consumers are weary of quick fixes and “miracle pills” that fail to deliver. Driven by growing skepticism, they are consulting health care practitioners and seeking brands that back their products with rigorous science, full transparency and verifiable anti-adulteration standards.
Bailey: The herbal supplement market is well positioned for continued growth. One market report estimated the global market at over $49 billion, with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.9 percent, reaching more than $116 billion by 2036. Vidya has seen this firsthand, with continued growth in interest in its saw palmetto extracts, including the clinically studied Vi-Spo.
Palumbo: The herbs and botanicals market remains strong as consumers increasingly turn to natural, plant-based solutions to support proactive health and wellness. At Indena too, we see demand evolving toward scientifically validated botanicals that address specific health needs. Healthy aging, cognitive and metabolic health, women’s health, and “beauty-from-within” all present significant opportunities for innovation.
Soman: The market for herbs and botanicals is strong, but it is also becoming far more sophisticated. A few years ago, “natural” itself was often enough to attract consumer interest. Today, consumers and brands are asking much more difficult questions: What does the ingredient actually do? Is there clinical evidence? Is the active chemistry standardized? Where was the plant sourced from? Is the ingredient traceable? And will every batch perform consistently? That change is very positive for the industry.
Roza: The market for herbs and botanicals is very robust. Globally, the market was valued at over $130 billion in 2025. This valuation reflects strong consumer interest in natural plant-based alternatives to over-the-counter drugs.
Katsoris: I think the botanical market is in a very strong position, but it is also evolving.
Botanicals are no longer confined to the traditional supplement aisle. We are seeing them increasingly incorporated into functional beverages, foods, sports nutrition, pet products and personal care. That is creating a much broader market for botanical ingredients than we had even a few years ago.
Fink: The market for herbs and botanicals is moving from traditional specific ingredients toward natural materials that address specific health concerns—backed by clinical science that allows strong consumer messaging. There’s a big difference between say echinacea and botanical extracts supported by multiple clinical studies with specific health benefits.
NIE: What are the health concerns on consumers’ minds when they look for herbal and botanical ingredients?
Zangara: Three concerns dominate, and they overlap more than people expect. Metabolic health leads, partly driven by the GLP-1 conversation: consumers want to know what supports lean muscle and body composition alongside weight loss. Healthy aging is second, treated now as a whole-body proposition spanning skin, cognition and energy rather than a single organ. Gut health sits underneath both, given how firmly research ties digestive balance to mood and immunity. What links all three is skepticism. Today’s consumers have read enough headlines about mislabeled ashwagandha and diluted turmeric to distrust a claim until it is substantiated. They want proof, not promises.
Zapp: Healthy aging remains a top consumer priority. However, the market is hungry to move beyond some of these old legacy ingredients toward new-thought solutions that deliver faster onset of action and superior absorption without complex delivery systems. Another burning topic is hormone support, especially around testosterone. In an age when endocrine disruptors are becoming a topic of conversation, men and women are thinking about hormone balance and how botanicals can support it.
Bailey: Herbal ingredients serve a wide array of health benefit categories, but Vidya’s most recent areas of focus have been driven by feedback from leading brands. These include beauty-from-within (hair and skin health) and women’s health, particularly menopause.
Palumbo: Consumers are increasingly focused on healthy aging—maintaining vitality, cognitive function, mobility, metabolic health, a youthful appearance, and overall quality of life. They want clinically supported solutions that help them stay active and healthy. This trend also includes “beauty-from-within,” as consumers seek nutritional support for skin elasticity, hydration and visible signs of aging. Indena believes this convergence of longevity, wellness and appearance creates a strong opportunity for clinically validated ingredients.
Soman: Mental wellness is one of the biggest areas we see today. Consumers are dealing with stress, poor sleep, mental fatigue, reduced concentration and difficulty maintaining focus throughout the day. These are no longer niche concerns. They affect students, professionals, working parents and increasingly even younger consumers. That is why ingredients associated with stress management, sleep, cognition, focus and emotional wellness are receiving so much attention.
Roza: Sleep, stress, energy, cognition and heart health are among the many health concerns that have driven consumers to seek natural alternatives because traditional allopathic treatments have not proven effective in addressing their concerns.
Katsoris: The strongest conversations we are seeing today are around stress and sleep, digestive and gut health, energy, metabolic health and weight management, healthy aging, cognitive support and immune health. Women’s health is also becoming much more targeted. Instead of one broad “women’s wellness” category, brands are developing products around different life stages and specific needs.
Fink: Sleep/stress, energy, weight/metabolic health, cognition and healthy aging are now at the center of the action, while immunity remains large but is no longer the singular growth story it was during COVID.
NIE: What are the latest developments in ingredient innovation?
Zangara: The most interesting innovation right now is not a new molecule. It is a better way of extracting and applying molecules already known to work. Our Pure-Hydro Process combines ultrapurified water as the sole extraction solvent with selective tangential-flow filtration, supporting high purity and solubility while avoiding organic solvents.
Zapp: Ingredient innovation is currently focused on three pillars: faster onset of action, validated standardization methods, and targeted multi-benefit solutions.
First, we see a push for modern alternatives to legacy botanicals. For example, our Oligen Olive Polyphenol Extract targets the same COX-1 and COX-2 pathways as curcumin for joint health and healthy aging.
Second, innovation in functional mushrooms is raising the bar on standardization and efficacy. Moving beyond basic beta-glucan claims, we developed a single-lab validated UHPLC-UV method published in Molecules to quantify the specific active secondary compounds (hericenones, hericenes, erinacine A and ergosterol) responsible for cognitive benefits. Our research on MycoThrive Lion’s Mane demonstrates acute cognitive effects within 60 to 120 minutes, sustained 45-day working memory gains, and a dual-action role as a precision prebiotic feeding Faecalibacterium prausnitzii to generate postbiotic butyrate along the gut-brain axis.
Finally, addressing modern health challenges like endocrine disruptors requires targeted innovation. We introduced TamaThrive, a standardized tamarind-moringa extract blend that has been clinically studied to support healthy testosterone levels, physical strength, muscle size and stamina.
Bailey: Ingredients have become much more specific in their focus—both in how they’re positioned in marketing and in the types of clinical studies conducted. Consumers want more detail than simply knowing an ingredient “supports women’s health.” As a result, brands are asking which part of a woman’s life journey an ingredient is relevant to such as perimenopause, menopause or post-menopause.
Palumbo: One of the most important developments is the use of delivery technologies to address the limited absorption of many botanical compounds. Indena Phytosome incorporates selected botanical constituents into a food-grade phospholipid matrix designed to improve their dispersion, bioabsorption and potential benefits.
Our newly introduced Centextra Centella Indena Phytosome exemplifies this approach by combining a standardized Centella asiatica extract with Indena Phytosome technology, creating a next-generation botanical for skin health and healthy aging.
Soman: For me, the most exciting innovation is not necessarily discovering a completely new plant. There is still enormous, untapped potential in plants that have been used for hundreds or thousands of years. The innovation is in understanding them better. Historically, the botanical industry often focused on one marker compound. We would define an ingredient as a certain percentage of curcuminoids, withanolides, bacosides or another known constituent. That is important for standardization, but plants are much more complex than one molecule. The industry is now moving toward understanding the complete phytochemical fingerprint of a botanical and the interaction between multiple compounds. That is particularly relevant for full-spectrum and holistic extracts. Instead of only asking, “How high can we make one active marker?” we should also be asking: “How much of the functional chemistry of the original plant can we preserve while still producing a standardized and reproducible ingredient?”
Roza: One of the greatest challenges in reaping the benefits of many plant bioactives is their poor bioavailability. To improve their bioavailability, companies are employing different methods to improve uptake, such as liposomes, nanotechnology and co-crystallization with other compounds.
Katsoris: A lot of innovation today is not necessarily about discovering the next exotic botanical. It is about making botanical ingredients more usable. That includes better extraction systems, alcohol-free options, different carrier systems, improved concentration, standardized extracts, bettersolubility and new delivery formats.
NIE: How are suppliers addressing sustainability?
Zangara: Sustainability in botanicals starts in the field. The public is paying increasing attention to the entire supply chain of a product: where it’s from, how it was made and by whom. Seeking reassurances on health and safety, today’s consumers want a guarantee that it was sourced and produced responsibly using traceable ingredients that meet sustainability, safety and other standards. Knowing the provenance of raw materials therefore allows manufacturers to claim the origin on their label and ensure complete transparency.
Zapp: At Applied Food Sciences, we take a holistic approach to sustainability. While environmental leadership and regenerative agriculture on the farm level are critical, true sustainability must span the entire supply chain. If a consumer purchases a product and it lacks the quality or efficacy to actually work, they won’t buy it again, and a business model built on one-time purchases is inherently unsustainable. True sustainability requires a supply chain where value aligns across every stakeholder, from the farmer to the ingredient supplier, the CPG manufacturer, and the end consumer. It means being willing to invest not just in responsible sourcing, but in third-party quality testing, anti-adulteration measures, and the clinical science required to ensure the ingredient delivers a genuine, repeatable benefit.
Bailey: Vidya takes steps such as crop rotation to preserve soil quality and ensure botanical harvests for years to come. We accomplish this by educating farming partners in the communities where these botanicals are sourced.
Palumbo: With Indena, sustainability means creating a “precious circle” connecting nature, technology and people. We advance sustainability by protecting biodiversity, reducing food waste, addressing climate change, and supporting the local communities connected to our botanical supply chains. Our approach goes beyond responsible sourcing and focuses on regenerative practices and long-term stewardship of natural resources while creating positive social and economic impact.
Soman: At Nisarga, we have always looked at this from a soil-to-shelf perspective. The more closely you understand and control the agricultural side of the supply chain, the better you can manage quality, sustainability and consistency. Climate change makes this even more important. Rainfall patterns, temperature, soil quality and harvest timing can significantly change both the agricultural yield and the phytochemical composition of a medicinal plant. So, sustainability is not only an environmental issue. It is also a quality and supply-chain resilience issue.
Roza: Through cultivation, using regenerative practices to ensure there is sufficient biomass to sustain production. Companies are also upcycling plant materials that would normally be discarded to capture compounds still present in the waste stream.
Katsoris: Sustainability in botanicals starts with the supply chain. Botanicals are agricultural materials, so weather, geography, harvest conditions and farming practices can have a direct impact on availability and quality. Responsible suppliers have to look beyond simply purchasing material at the best available price. There is increasing attention being paid to traceability, responsible cultivation and wild harvesting, supplier qualification, agricultural practices and the long-term availability of important botanical species. I also think sustainability and supply security are becoming increasingly connected. A sustainable botanical supply chain has to work environmentally, but it also has to be economically viable for the growers, processors and manufacturers involved if we expect it to exist 10 or 20 years from now.
NIE: How are suppliers addressing adulteration?
Zangara: Adulteration has stopped being a theoretical risk and become a headline. Ashwagandha is the clearest example: independent testing has repeatedly found extracts containing aerial parts, leaves and stems, sold as pure root. No single test catches every trick. Combating this takes layered analytical control: chromatographic fingerprinting against reference standards, marker-compound testing, and increasingly DNA-based methods.
Zapp: Every botanical has a unique blueprint for verifying quality and ensuring it is exactly what it claims to be. Right now, one of the most poignant examples of this challenge is lion’s mane. Because of its massive popularity and the historical lack of an industry-standard testing method, it is at high risk of adulteration.
Species name alone does not guarantee a product will deliver the benefits consumers expect. Even standardizing for primary compounds like beta-glucans is insufficient, because beta-glucans can come from grain-growing mediums or synthetic adulterants. To truly verify identity and efficacy, we must measure secondary compounds of interest, such as hericenones, hericenes, erinacines and ergosterol.
Bailey: Vidya works regularly with third-party testing laboratories around the world to verify that materials meet identity standards. In addition, our internal R&D team validates the authenticity of raw botanical materials using in-house identity methods before release.
Palumbo: Indena has been a long-time advocate in addressing adulteration through industry efforts to uncover and address adulterated materials and products. Indena’s commitment for its ingredients includes authenticity, traceability and rigorous quality control from the plant to the finished ingredient. We qualify suppliers, maintain full supply-chain traceability, and use botanical, chemical and genomic identification to verify the identity and purity of raw materials. Indena has also developed species-specific DNA-barcoding methods that complement traditional techniques and help distinguish authentic plants from potential adulterants.
Soman: The first line of defence is supply-chain control. If you know the farmer, the geography, the plant, the harvest season and the processing history, the risk decreases significantly. After that comes analytical testing. I do not believe botanical authentication should rely on one test. The future relies on a combination of methods: botanical identification, microscopy where applicable, HPTLC or chromatographic fingerprinting, HPLC, GC, mass spectrometry, marker analysis and contaminant testing. DNA authentication can also be very useful at the raw-material stage, although it becomes more difficult once an ingredient has undergone significant extraction or processing. Know where your botanical came from, and then analytically prove that it is what you believe it is.
Roza: Utilizing blockchain technology to trace material to its origin, carbon isotope, and other analytical methodologies. DNA testing has advanced significantly since its inception, but it has also produced false positives.
Katsoris: This remains one of the most important issues in the botanical industry. With botanicals, you are dealing with natural materials that can vary significantly based on species, plant part, geography, growing conditions and processing. That makes proper botanical identity and supplier qualification extremely important. There is no single test that solves the problem. It requires a comprehensive quality program involving qualified suppliers, raw material identification, appropriate analytical testing, documentation, traceability and an understanding of the botanical itself. The industry has also become much more sophisticated in analytical methods used for authentication and adulteration detection. For reputable manufacturers, quality control has to begin before the botanical ever reaches the extraction process.
Fink: In 2023, PLT partner Nektium Pharma introduced a program of cultivation for its rhodiola raw materials. The cultivation program developed by Nektium represented more than a decade of work to produce cultivated Rhodiola rosea with a physical and phytochemical profile matching the previously used wildcrafted materials. This program directly addressed the issue of sustainability and supply assurance. But it did more. It didn’t just address environmental pressure on wild rhodiola populations; it reduced the number of uncontrolled handoffs where substitution and species mixing can occur.
NIE: What’s next for botanicals?
Zangara: Two things are converging: species and life stage. Botanicals are moving past the assumption that one extract fits everybody. Expect more formulations built around specific life stages, and increasingly beyond the human body altogether, as the pet nutrition trend we mentioned picks up real momentum. Geographically, watch Asia-Pacific: it is already the fastest-growing region for botanical supplements, where Mediterranean and other Western botanical traditions are meeting local wellness expectations in genuinely new formulations.
Zapp: Ultimately, the future of botanicals is about “bringing the feel to functional.” We are developing tools to help product manufacturers showcase not just the raw extract, but the tangible physical or mental shift the consumer experiences. Whether a product is designed for unwinding after a long day, staying laser-focused at work, or delivering a healthy buzz for an alcohol-free social hour, we are helping our partners connect botanical science directly to real-world consumer occasions.
Bailey: Vidya continually invests in R&D to discover novel bioactives and new botanical sources around the world in support of our customers’ innovation efforts.
Palumbo: What’s next for botanicals is a shift toward smarter, more targeted and scientifically substantiated ingredients. At Indena, we see the future in combining the intelligence of nature with advanced technologies, clinically supported efficacy and innovative formulations to address complex health needs such as healthy aging, metabolic health, brain health and beauty-from-within.
Soman: I believe the next stage of the industry will be precision botanicals. We are moving away from the traditional model of simply saying a product contains 500 milligrams of a particular herb.
Roza: The use of precision and solid-state fermentation to produce active compounds such as resveratrol found in botanicals as an alternate source. It doesn’t require plant biomass, is highly scalable, and provides for a high degree of purity.
Katsoris: I think botanicals will increasingly become part of everyday consumer products rather than remaining a distinct category of their own. Functional beverages are a good example. Consumers are already looking for drinks positioned around energy, relaxation, cognition, gut health, immunity and other specific functions. Botanicals fit naturally into that movement.
Fink: In early 2026, PLT introduced our Experiential Longevity initiative that addresses the confluence of health issues. PLT’s Experiential Longevity initiative connects the underlying biology of aging with tangible benefits consumers can feel today, such as better mobility, strength, energy and cognitive performance. New ingredient development and new clinical science seek to understand the long-term implications of supplementation. It reframes longevity from simply extending lifespan to helping people stay active, capable and resilient throughout life. NIE
Reference:
1 Botanical Supplements Market Size Report, Growth Drivers 2026–2031 – Mordor Intelligence. www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/botanical-supplements-market.
