Bioprospecting 5.0: A Conceptual and Methodological Proposal for Plant Resource Valorization

This document proposes integrative principles that articulate fully established and validated approaches—such as ethnobotany, One Health, circular bioeconomy, TRL, and Access and Benefit-Sharing—into an integrative model that shifts bioprospecting from a purely extractive model centered on the pharmaceutical industry to a more human-centered, circular, and biocultural paradigm. Through a historical analysis of the generations of bioprospecting (from 0.0 to 4.0), this work theorizes that technological advancement has paradoxically contributed to epistemic injustice. The proposed 5.0 framework integrates social validation tools and introduces the Epistemic Gap Score (EGS) as an exploratory heuristic tool that allows for visualizing the divergence or cohesion of bioprospecting a plant resource and the recognition of ancestral knowledge in a more humanistic manner. Through preliminary proof-of-concept, this study demonstrates the practical utility of the EGS for prioritizing plant species for bioprospecting, ensuring that the valorization of underutilized plant resources produces a tangible “epistemic return” and thereby promotes community autonomy and multisectoral benefits across the food, energy, and health systems. By focusing on zero-waste cycles and social reciprocity, Bioprospecting 5.0 reestablishes the role of plant resources as essential components of sustainable global development and ethical scientific practice.