Chemical Profiling and Authentication of Boswellia Species and Frankincense Products: Advances in Metabolomics and Quality Markers

Frankincense is an aromatic oleo-gum resin obtained from Boswellia species and is widely used in traditional medicine, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, perfumery, and incense products. Its expanding trade has intensified concerns over species substitution, geographical mislabeling, adulteration, compositional variability, and inconsistent product quality. Authentication is complicated by an extensive overlap in volatile and non-volatile metabolites among commercially important species and by variation arising from provenance, environment, harvesting, storage, processing, and extraction. This review examines chemical profiling and authentication strategies for Boswellia resins and frankincense-derived products, focusing on volatile terpenes, diterpenoids, boswellic acids, methoxyalkanes, stereochemical signatures, and multivariate quality markers. The available evidence shows that single markers and nonspecific total-acid assays are insufficient for robust authentication, whereas orthogonal workflows integrating targeted quantification, chemical fingerprints, stereochemical information, and validated multivariate models provide substantially greater confidence. Future progress depends on authenticated reference collections, standardized sampling and analytical protocols, certified reference materials, expanded spectral libraries, interlaboratory validation, explainable machine learning, and traceable supply-chain metadata.