The 2025 saw palmetto harvest has begun, but with empty palms and no pickers. While the industry struggles to secure supplies for 2026, this is the right time to talk about quality.
Why talk about quality right now?
When supply decreases and demand remains high, as happens in years with difficult harvests, the risk of adulteration grows exponentially. The high price of Saw Palmetto oil becomes a strong incentive for those who, without scruples, partially or completely replace the raw material with cheaper vegetable oils or other undeclared additives.
What is Serenoa repens?
Serenoa repens, commonly known as Saw Palmetto, is a small palm native to the southeastern United States, particularly Florida. Its berries are harvested at full ripeness and extracted to obtain an oil rich in free fatty acids and phytosterols.
The high therapeutic value and strong commercial demand make Saw Palmetto oil particularly vulnerable to adulteration, which is why identification tests and chemical profile analysis are more important today than ever.
When is Saw palmetto harvested?
Saw Palmetto berries are harvested once a year, during the summer months, with the peak season between August and September. The timing of the harvest is crucial: the berries must be picked at full maturity to ensure the highest concentration of active compounds and the best quality of the lipid extract.
Our field experience: how to recognize quality?
Direct market experience has taught us that, in most cases, quality can be assessed with a practical approach, without necessarily resorting to complex analytical tools:
Check the color of the oil or powder:
Authentic Saw Palmetto oil is a dark amber/brown liquid. If you are offered a greenish oil, no further analysis is needed: it is not a quality oil. In such cases, it was either produced from unripe berries or from another source.Even when the oil is formulated into a powder using excipients such as maltodextrin, silica, or acacia gum, the final product can never be bright white, but at most yellowish or beige. If it appears white, it is not authentic.
Request a full fatty acid profile – not just the total fatty acid content:
The total fatty acid content alone is not enough. It is essential to ask your supplier or laboratory for the detailed composition of each fatty acid. Saw Palmetto extract has a characteristic lipid fingerprint that clearly distinguishes it from other vegetable oils. According to the USP monograph, an authentic extract must contain ten key fatty acids (caproic, caprylic, capric, lauric, myristic, palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, and linolenic) in a specific ratio to lauric acid.The total fatty acid content is obtained by summing the individual components. Therefore, if you already have the total fatty acid content, the detailed profile of the extract is also available without the need for further analysis or additional costs. If the profile does not report all ten fatty acids of the USP monograph, or if the ratios differ, it is legitimate to doubt the authenticity of the product.
Conclusion
Quality begins in the field.
It is our collective responsibility to maintain high standards in the botanical supply chain.
Let us demand transparency and protect the integrity of our industry.
For further reading on this topic, we recommend this excellent publication from HerbalGram: Saw Palmetto Adulteration Bulletin (HerbalGram)