The Alban Muller Group is launching the A.M.I. Encyclopedia, a bi-lingual (English, French) database, which accessible on the Internet upon subscription [1], and brings together 250 plants to begin with, which have been studied and analysed by the group.

According to the French producer of natural ingredients and designer of natural cosmetic formulas, the database should facilitate research for laboratories and development teams, and help marketing departments find the best ingredients to create a product or range.

The integrated search engine allows finding plants by climate zone (altitude, arid, very cold, tropical, etc.), by habitat (desert, fresh water, scrubland, savannah, etc.), by morphological type (alga, tree, mushroom, climbing plant, etc.), and also by symbolism or legend. It is also possible to look for plants according to the chemical compounds they contain (carbohydrates, protids, lipids, minerals, vitamins, organic acids, phenolic compounds, terpenoids, etc.), or their specific properties (moisturising, antioxidant, softening, etc.).

The database will grow monthly with newly added plants, Alban Muller says.