Maca & Ginseng Energy Blend Capsules

This finished capsule pairs two botanicals that brands routinely put together and that almost nobody specifies properly. The maca fraction is an extract of the dried hypocotyl of Lepidium meyenii Walp., family Brassicaceae — the swollen storage organ of an Andean crop also treated taxonomically as Lepidium peruvianum Chacon — sourced from the Junin and Pasco plateau of the central Peruvian Andes. The ginseng fraction is an extract of the dried main and lateral root of Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer, family Araliaceae, the Asian or Korean ginseng of commerce, from established Chinese or Korean growing regions. Extraction, blending, encapsulation and release testing are carried out in India. The house reference build is a size 0 shell at a 500 mg fill, 350 mg of maca extract at not less than 0.6% total glucosinolates with 150 mg of Panax ginseng root extract at 20% total ginsenosides by UV, and the formula is rebuilt to a buyer's brief on ratio, marker family, method and capsule size. Both halves carry a marker trap, and a buyer who does not name the method on the purchase order will eventually receive something they did not intend. Maca is standardised on two entirely separate and non-interchangeable families. Glucosinolates are the sulphur-containing brassica markers dominated by glucotropaeolin, benzyl glucosinolate, which published profiling puts at roughly 80 to 90 per cent of total glucosinolates across the red, yellow and black ecotypes; the common trade grade is 0.6 per cent total glucosinolates, and trade certificates report it more often by UV as glucotropaeolin than by HPLC, so the spec must admit both. Macamides are N-benzyl fatty acid amides that occur only in maca and are usually quoted with macaenes at 0.5 to 0.6 per cent by HPLC. A 0.6 per cent glucosinolate extract and a 0.6 per cent macamide extract are different articles. Ginseng is worse. Total ginsenosides by UV colorimetry and by HPLC are different measurements that do not agree on the same lot, UV reading substantially higher because it responds to material beyond the individual ginsenosides; an 80 per cent UV figure in the market is in practice stem-and-leaf material rather than root and has no place in a root specification. The European Pharmacopoeia monograph sets the root at not less than 0.40 per cent for the sum of ginsenosides Rg1 and Rb1 by HPLC, and the same HPLC marker set — protopanaxadiols Rb1, Rb2, Rc and Rd with protopanaxatriols Re, Rf and Rg1 — releases extract lots. Ginsenoside Rf is the identity handle that a label cannot provide: it occurs in Panax ginseng and not in Panax quinquefolius, so the chromatogram settles the species question outright. We release on the finished capsule and name the method for each fraction on the certificate. The declarations that decide whether this passes a buyer's audit are the allergen line, the stimulant line and the shell. Maca is a crucifer, and because mustard is a declared allergen under EU Regulation 1169/2011 Annex II and in Canada, every EU buyer will query a Brassicaceae ingredient: the material is botanically related to mustard but contains no mustard seed material and is not a declarable allergen, and it is worth stating both halves of that plainly. Beyond that, no milk, egg, soy, fish, crustacean, mollusc, peanut, tree nut, sesame, celery or lupin material and no gluten-bearing cereal enters the process, and the material is non-GMO. The product is caffeine-free: no caffeine, synephrine or other stimulant is added, which matters because stimulant spiking and sibutramine are the documented adulterants of energy-positioned supplements, and we screen every lot by LC-MS/MS accordingly. With the standard hypromellose shell the capsule is vegan; a gelatin shell makes it vegetarian at best and bovine or porcine in origin, declared on the specification. Shells are titanium dioxide free, E171 having lost its EU food-additive authorisation on 7 August 2022, and magnesium stearate where used is palm-derived. On CITES, Panax ginseng is listed in Appendix II only for the population of the Russian Federation and that annotation covers whole and sliced root while excluding extracts, so cultivated Chinese and Korean root carries no permit burden; material from the Russian Far East would be a different matter. Thovek makes no therapeutic or disease claim for this product. Claim wording and substantiation are the buyer's responsibility, botanical health claims remain on hold in the EU under Regulation 1924/2006, and US structure-function claims require the statutory disclaimer and notification to FDA within thirty days of first marketing.