Roy Upton  Roy Upton is co-founder and former executive director of the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia (AHP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing quality control standards for botanical medicines. He also serves as a professional herbalist and director at Planetary Herbals, a California-based herbal products company.

Since establishing the AHP in 1995, Roy has helped set the global benchmark for herbal quality. AHP monographs are widely regarded as the industry's most authoritative and comprehensive publications, ensuring the highest standards of efficacy and safety through rigorous protocols for plant identification, purity, and analysis.

With over four decades in herbal medicine, Roy draws on a remarkably diverse training background that spans traditional Ayurvedic, Chinese, and Western herbal traditions, along with extensive research into Native American and Caribbean ethnobotany. He is a professional member of the American Herbalists Guild.

Roy has been instrumental in advancing industry-wide quality standards through his work with the American Herbal Products Association Quality Control Committee, the AOAC International Botanical Expert Review Committee, and NSF International. He and the AHP team recognize that centuries of traditional herbal practice, now increasingly validated by modern science, hold essential therapeutic value. Their work aims to bridge critical knowledge gaps in the U.S. healthcare system by building a robust, evidence-informed body of herbal knowledge锟斤拷delivered through authoritative monographs, textbooks, and educational resources for both clinicians and the public.

Beyond standards development, Roy has edited and contributed to numerous publications, including the Herbal Series (Keats Publishing). He also authored the monographs on St. John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum) and Echinacea for CRC Press's Botanical Safety Handbook.