[kapileshdubey]

I have a mixture of three plant materials in fine powder form, i want to calculate the percentage of all the three materials in the mixture?

[Borek]

42.

Note thats the same answer as the one given to the question on  "Life, the Universe, and Everything".

In other words: the question is so ambiguous that any answer will do. Please elaborate.

[kapileshdubey]

I am having a powder, the only thing i know about it is that it is a mixture of three plants that are:
1/. Embelica officinalis
2/. Terminalia chebula
3/. Terminalia belerica
Now i want to know how could i estimate the ratio of each one in that mixture.

[Borek]

Much better now

But it is still pretty tough question. The only reasonable approach I can think off requires knowledge about each dried herb composition; then analysis of mixture can give enough information to find out amounts of components.

Could be that if the powder is not too fine and parts of the plants can be relatively easy distinguished Cinderella approach with magnifying glass and tweezers will be the best solution in terms of cost - separating on thousand 1 mg particles can be done in an hour or two and you have to pay for relatively easy work; full blown chemical analysis can take many hours and sophisticated apparatus.

[Yggdrasil]

You could take a sample, and perform quantitative PCR using three sets of primers, each one specific for DNA from one of the the species in question.  Comparing the numbers from the three qPCR reactions should give you a rough estimate of the composition of the mixture.