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Bula Kava House

Bula Kava House

Portland, OR
Kava Vendor
Kava Bar Owner
I think we should all raise a shell to Tyler at Root of Happiness for moving the kava industry forward in a way that will drastically help the ENTIRE kava supply chain. Kavalytics is probably now the most accurate way to test kava for chemotype, kavalactone percentage, and even noble vs. non-noble. The cool thing is that it gets more accurate over time as the system gets more data points. It's cleaner, easier, and cheaper than anything that was previously used. I feel like like Kavalytics will render HPLC and colorometric testing obsolete for kava. It can be used in the kava field, at an exporter's facility, at a kava bar, or even at home by consumers. As a vendor and kava fanatic, I can tell you that this is a huge step. Check out the white paper and video here.

 

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The Kap'n

The Kap'n

The Groggy Kaptain (40g)
KavaForums Founder
Bula Kava House said:
I think we should all raise a shell to Tyler at Root of Happiness for moving the kava industry forward in a way that will drastically help the ENTIRE kava supply chain. Kavalytics is probably now the most accurate way to test kava for chemotype, kavalactone percentage, and even noble vs. non-noble. The cool thing is that it gets more accurate over time as the system gets more data points. It's cleaner, easier, and cheaper than anything that was previously used. I feel like like Kavalytics will render HPLC and colorometric testing obsolete for kava. It can be used in the kava field, at an exporter's facility, at a kava bar, or even at home by consumers. As a vendor and kava fanatic, I can tell you that this is a huge step. Check out the white paper and video here.

Click to expand...
Oh, now that's another round of good news! The kava world is quite on fire with positive additions.

Thank you Judd.
 
verticity

verticity

I'm interested in things
This is fantastic, and in principle could give vastly superior results compared with colorimetry, with the added benefit of not needing any solvents or lab equipment. I really do hope this sees widespread adoption.

I remember looking into this method originally developed by Gautz, Bittenbender et al ( https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf060964v ) several years ago; however at that time NIRS instruments were insanely expensive. Fast forward to now and there are OEM instruments such as the NIRvascan ( https://nirvascan.alliedscientificpro.com/ ) available for ~$2000 to make this kind of commercial application possible.
 
Bula Kava House

Bula Kava House

Portland, OR
Kava Vendor
Kava Bar Owner
verticity said:
This is fantastic, and in principle could give vastly superior results compared with colorimetry, with the added benefit of not needing any solvents or lab equipment. I really do hope this sees widespread adoption.

I remember looking into this method originally developed by Gautz, Bittenbender et al ( https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf060964v ) several years ago; however at that time NIRS instruments were insanely expensive. Fast forward to now and there are OEM instruments such as the NIRvascan ( https://nirvascan.alliedscientificpro.com/ ) available for ~$2000 to make this kind of commercial application possible.
Click to expand...
It is great, and apparently has already been adopted by numerous suppliers according to Tyler. Even some government agriculture organizations are looking into it. NIRS isn't new, and as you mentioned was explored for its use in kava some time ago, but it never really ended in a complete product. I talked with Tyler and he worked very hard to make this a viable finished product.
 
Intrepidus_dux

Intrepidus_dux

Kava O.G.
Henry said:
Have they addressed the issues raised by Dr Lebot and others?

If the have been addressed that's awesome and indeed revolutionary. It would be a game changer in terms of accessibility and affordibility of testing.
Click to expand...
What were the concerns raised?

Ok, let's all say "simple sample preparation" ten times fast and see who doesn't mess up. :D
 
avahZ

avahZ

YAHWEH Shalom
Bula Kava House said:
I think we should all raise a shell to Tyler at Root of Happiness for moving the kava industry forward in a way that will drastically help the ENTIRE kava supply chain. Kavalytics is probably now the most accurate way to test kava for chemotype, kavalactone percentage, and even noble vs. non-noble. The cool thing is that it gets more accurate over time as the system gets more data points. It's cleaner, easier, and cheaper than anything that was previously used. I feel like like Kavalytics will render HPLC and colorometric testing obsolete for kava. It can be used in the kava field, at an exporter's facility, at a kava bar, or even at home by consumers. As a vendor and kava fanatic, I can tell you that this is a huge step. Check out the white paper and video here.

Click to expand...
When you’re finished with that bucket, put all that sample “waste” and send it my way for umm proper disposal...
 
Intrepidus_dux

Intrepidus_dux

Kava O.G.
Henry said:
The range used by this device is, in light of existing research, insufficient to determine the chemotype with any sufficient degree of certainty (to their credit kavanalytics acknowledge this in their white paper), the accuracy of determination of tudei blends using this method has also been questioned.
Click to expand...
I see, so it's likely not thorough or accurate enough quite yet. It would be good for preliminary testing though. Maybe use it to figure out which products need further lab testing.
 
Bula Kava House

Bula Kava House

Portland, OR
Kava Vendor
Kava Bar Owner
Not sure what Dr. Lebot's concern was, but it must have been worked out. I've seen the data and Kavalytics is VERY accurate for chemotype. It's validated at something like 95% accurate. It was developed based on HPLC results, in fact. Tyler sent hundreds of samples in for HPLC analysis to use as a baseline for comparative NIRS analysis. If you use HPLC to test an identical sample, it will have a result within a few hundredths or tenths of a percent of Kavalytics.

Testing for non-noble blends is a little more nuanced since what defines a tudei or a noble isn't really properly defined. From Tyler: "Kavalytics is trained to ID mixes above 30% tudei, but it depends on how flagrant the mix is. Anymore we now just rely upon the actual analytics like kavain to DHM ratio, and flavokavain percentage (we don’t want above 0.25%). There’s all kinds of nobles, all kinds of tudeis and there’s no possible way to assign some percentage of tudei cutoff. Some noble like MOI is already at 0.2% (flavokavain) so a small amount of tudei makes it flag. Some tudei is real flagrant with high FK levels whereas others are almost noble. Lots of factors. The cutoff is that we don’t want material where K: DHM is below 1 or Flavokavains above 0.2-0.25. You can look at the analytics and know right away if borogu has 2-3x as much kavain and 0.15% FK, and to get something that’s 243, but with a K to DHM of 1.3 and FK of 0.275 that it’s a mix."

Unfortunately, there still isn't a 100% accurate way to know the exact amount of tudei that may be mixed into your kava powder. Kavalytics is as good or better than anything we've seen yet to help figure it out though.
 
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verticity

verticity

I'm interested in things
The Kavalytics web site states the the accuracy of the first 3 digits of the chemotype is 60%. But it does cite excellent accuracy for positive ID (100%), noble/tudei sorting (95%) and total kavalactones (84%):

"KavaLytics™ 3.5 Model Features and Accuracy
  • Positively identify Kava – 100%
  • Determine if Kava is Noble or Non-Noble – 95%+
  • Provide total Kavalactone content - 84%+
  • Provide the first three numbers of the chemotype i.e. “4-2-3” - 60%+ (Beta)
  • Detect common adulterants of Kava including:
    • Excessive Peeled stems or “White Kasa” Content
    • Unpeeled stems or stem peelings or “Black Kasa”
    • Aerial stalks, stems, and leaves
    • Spent kava or “Makas”
From: https://kavalytics.com/​

The concern was probably that in the NIRS studies that were done in the past (the paper by Gautz and another one by Lebot himself) they used instruments capable of measuring wavelengths between 400-2500 nm, and found that the region above 2000 nm was especially important for determining accurate chemotypes. The accuracy of individual KL measurements in Gautz's paper was about 90% relative to HPLC. The Kavalytics instrument can only detect NIR wavelengths between 900-1700nm, so a 60% accuracy for a partial chemotype makes sense to me based on working with half the NIR spectrum compared to those previous papers. Reproducing a result for an identical sample wouldn't tell you much. The real test would be completely different unknown samples.
 
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