About Bent Creek Institute
Bent Creek Institute : Who We Are & Where We Work
Bent Creek Institute, Inc. (BCI) is a 501(c)3 non-profit business incubator conserving and developing WNC's unique plant biodiversity assets by anchoring our nation's emerging integrative wellness economy through science in botanical quality and safety. BCI is a program of The North Carolina Arboretum (TNCA), an affiliate of The University of North Carolina. BCI will collaborate with Asheville’s extraordinary integrative healthcare community to make our region synonymous with safe, effective, and affordable botanical therapies as a primary wellness support system backed by ethical life sciences, sustainable cultivation practices, and thousands of years of traditional use worldwide.
Our Mission & Focus: Bio-Botanical Jobs Growth in WNC, Service to the Nation
BCI’s mission is to grow an economic cluster in WNC rooted in reverence for our region’s unique biodiversity and botanical traditions, and expressed through scientific testing, research, and horticultural collaborations. The Bent Creek Germplasm Repository (BCGR) of The North Carolina Arboretum is North America’s only gene bank dedicated to archiving, conserving, and storing medicinal plants and related endophyte germplasm for medical and horticultural research. Anchored by BCGR’s botanical research and conservation activities, BCI fosters sustainable jobs growth based on validated botanical medicines and integrative healthcare solutions that serve the wellness needs of our region, our state, and our nation.
BCI will manage the growth and development of the US Botanical Safety Laboratory (USBSL), a non-profit consortium of botanical research laboratory partners based at campuses and facilities under the UNC, NC State, and NC Community College systems primarily in Western North Carolina. USBSL seeks to provide federal agencies, academic institutions, foreign regulatory entities, and private companies with non-biased, state-of-the-art botanical safety and quality testing services utilizing the depth of botanical competency and the prodigious range of analytical instrumentation already deployed at academic botanical research centers in North Carolina. Consumers, practitioners, natural products industry members, and regulatory agencies will benefit from tapping into the significant resource base offered through USBSL.
