Behind the scenes 02 | fingerprints and formulations
This week we’re thrilled to share some images on the production and finalisation of our bottled formulations, aka plant pods in the (never before seen) sofi lab.
We sincerely hope you enjoy these snippets of the behind the scenes science at work in sofi. First and foremost, welcome to the sofi lab!
From fingerprinting each and every harvest (batch) of our plants, to the meticulous flavour testing of our final formulations, the sofi lab is where much of the sofi plant magic takes place!
(Of course, the real magic happens in the earth, powered by the sun as the plants grow, and we are simply the beneficiaries - but this where we truly understand what it is that we are going to deliver in this harvest to you).
Part 1: fingerprints
Fingerprinting is really just a complicated term for collecting data that allows us to understand the complete profile of any given harvest of any given plant. Unlike store bought herbal remedies, this enables us to account for any external influence that may have impacted the ratio of active compounds within a particular extract. Why is this important? Well, imagine this.
If, instead of saying which bottle of red or white wine you planned to order at a restaurant, you just asked them to serve you grapes in a bottle! Kind of risky! It might result in the best dinner ever or maybe miss the mark entirely.
What’s amazing, for those wine connoisseurs, is that they not only care for their type of wine and vineyard and location, but also the vintage or year the wine is from. This has to do with the fact that the ambient conditions year on year could be different, and the way that harvest receives sun, rain, will actually impact the availability of the compounds that really matter (like us - the conditions the plants grow can have a real impact on them). Even the time in the lunar cycle that plants are harvested can impact on the potency of this (Mike, our ethnobotanist wrote an amazing article on this - link here)!
So really, the only way to truly understand a particular harvest is to fingerprint it. Yet, as it currently stands, we simply do not understand most medicinal plants in this way. It’s why buying a bottle of ginseng or valerian from online or in a health food shop is not all that different to ordering a bottle of grapes at dinner; there is a certain degree of “well…fingers crossed!”
In order to change this, and to really move the science forward, we are looking at finger printing each harvest of plants that we use in our formulations. Our ambition is actually not to create a uniform product, but really to capture and celebrate the inter-variability that exists between crops from season to season, and year to year - even of the exact same plant that is grown by the same farmer in the same plot of land.
In the sofi lab you’ll find a series of incredible, and highly technical machines that carry out the tasks necessary to create this comprehensive account of each and every harvest of plants:
The inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometer machine (pictured partially above) detects any heavy metals present in the crop soil, by generating a plasma from the solution using extremely high heat (around 10,000 degrees). The quality of elements within the sample can then be determined using the intensity of light emitted from plasma at a particular wavelength.
Meanwhile, the high-pressure liquid chromatography machine (or HPLC) uses techniques of analytical chemistry to separate, identify, and quantify each component in a mixture. This divides each extract into a few hundred specific compounds so they can be measured by their molecular weight, providing a comprehensive fingerprint of - not only the entire plant - but each of the hundreds of compounds within the plant itself.
Why is knowing a plant’s fingerprint so important?
Well, as mentioned above, between different species, batches, methods of extraction, active compounds, as well as external factors such as time of harvest, location, and storage conditions, the therapeutic properties of valerian (for example), can differ from crop to crop.
In the case of natural medicines, the extent to which a plant actually works as intended to help an individual — whether it’s to sleep better or reduce anxiety — can vary completely if the fingerprint of the specific plant extract is unknown.
You can find more information on the importance of this analysis by visiting, “what is fingerprinting?” on the sofi blog. We also have a video of our sofi labs featuring @mark (our qualified person) and @David (our biochemist) in case you wanted to see more. There you’ll find everything you ever wanted to know about how we fingerprint each plant batch that we deliver for Pioneers (click here to view).
Part 2: formulations
Once a plant has been fingerprinted, the next step is turning it into a remedy to be enjoyed. Valerian root attributes some of its many health benefits to naturally active compounds found in the plant, such as valepotriates, mono-terpenes, sesquiterpenes and carboxylic compounds, as well as flavonoids and low levels of gamma-amino butyric acid, all of which contribute to the distinctive flavour profile of the valerian root.
The S1 Pioneer Box contains three taste profiles of our valerian formulation, each specifically designed to compliment the natural taste of the plant. We know taste is incredibly personal and we want you to love your journey with us - sometimes that involves trying to get plant medicine to taste a little bit less like eating mud! ;)!
Finally, each colourful glass bottle (we call these plant pods) has a corresponding flavour of valerian, and labelled accordingly in the S1 Pioneer Box.
You will also notice that the particular valerian formulation you are spraying will be highlighted when we release the full sofi app. They will be numbered (n.01, n.02 and n.03) and we are randomising pioneers to start their journey with one of the three so we start to gain insights right away across all three formulations. You will know which one is your starting formulation to test, as there will be a small card inside the sofi stick when you receive your S1 package.
We hope you enjoyed this bit of further visibility into how the plant finds its way to you!
xx