Chemometrics Discussion at IPB, a New Science for Herbal Practitioners

Chemometrics is a science of how to extract information from a data-rich chemical system. This information can later be applied to solve both descriptive and predictive problems in experimental living sciences.

Tropical Biopharmaca Research Centre (BRC Trop) of Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) held a Chemometrics Application Workshop at the Conference Room of BRC Trop, Kencana Park, IPB Campus, Bogor (27-29/10). This workshop was intended for researchers who have interest in the use of chemometrics in herbal medicine research.

"Chemometrics utilizes mathematical and statistical sciences for the processing of chemical data analysis and for the initial assumption. Laboratory needs a lot of samples. Chemometrics is useful for screening the data to narrow the large samples," said Dr. Wisnu Ananta Kusuma, Executive Secretary of BRC Trop of IPB.

Rudy Heryanto, a resource person of the workshop, said that chemometrics is a chemical discipline that uses mathematical science, statistics and formal logic to design or select an experimental procedure. Chemometrics science plays a role in the analysis of ingredients and herbal products, especially in the research development of herbal medicine products.

"Applications of chemometrics to develop herbal products is to search information on multi components or multi ingredients," he said.

Therefore, participants who attended this workshop could get information about chemometrics applications related to herbal medicine. This workshop was also to facilitate practitioners in the use of chemometrics for research.

"I really want to know more about chemometrics because I am completely blind about chemometrics. I hope that I can use this science to detect halal and haram foods," said Nurulhidayah Binti Ahmad Fadzillah from the International Institute of Halal Research and Training, Malaysia, which became one of the participants. (TK)