Name: Common ginseng – wild ginseng (growing and cultivation)
Panax schinseng ( Nees ) V. Esenb.
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Synonyms: panax, ginseng, human root, real ginseng, life root, stosil.
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Description. Perennial herbaceous plant from the Araliaceae family. The root is fleshy, aromatic, cylindrically oblong, at the end with several branching processes, giving it an often bizarre shape, resembling a human figure, and numerous adventitious roots. The stem is green, solitary, thin, straight, round, at the base with several fleshy scales, up to 3070 cm high, bearing a whorl of 25 leaves at the top, between which 46 kg / ha. For winter sowing, the rate is increased to 7 kg / ha without incorporation. Sowing is carried out by seeders with disc or anchor coulters.
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Plantation care . During the growing season, it is recommended to weed the weeds in rows two or three times and carry out three to four mechanized tillage between rows. In the second year of life in early spring, the transitional plantations are loosened and fed, and weeds are also weeded out once or twice.
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Grass harvesting is carried out during the flowering period, when the maximum number of glycosides in plants accumulates. Mow with headers or hay harvesters at a height of 1015 cm from the soil plane.
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Growing seeds . Seeds are harvested as seed material during the period of wax maturity (not brought to full ripening to avoid shedding). A flower-bearing arrow comes out. The leaves are compound, long-petioled, palmately five-parted. The flower-bearing arrow is simple, thin with one apical umbel or in the lower part with 13 branches bearing smaller 516-flowered umbels, pink, rarely white. The fruit is a one-, two- and, infrequently, three-seeded, bean-shaped drupe, laterally flattened, bright red. Seeds rough, irregularly rounded. Blooms in June July; fruit ripening in August September. Weight of 1000 seeds within 25 g.
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biological features . Under natural conditions, ginseng grows and develops very slowly. Its seeds have a long dormant period: from the moment of ripening to germination it takes within 2 years (seeds undergo natural stratification in the soil). During this time, the embryo slowly grows in the seeds, which is underdeveloped by the time the seeds ripen. Especially slow growth is observed in the first two years.
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Under natural conditions, ginseng is found very rarely. So, in China and Korea, it is almost completely destroyed. In the USSR, a wild plant is harvested, but in very limited quantities.
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Natural reserves of ginseng are depleted. It survived only under particularly favorable conditions. Therefore, ginseng belongs to relic plants.
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Habitat . It grows in remote and shady places, in coniferous and mixed forests, in gorges, deep mountain valleys on loose humus soil.
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Distribution . In the wild, it is found in the northern part of Korea and in the north of China, in the USSR in Primorsky and in the south of the Khabarovsk Territory.
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Cultivation of ginseng in culture has been known since ancient times (in China, Japan, Korea and other eastern states).
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In Russia, ginseng was first tested in the St. Petersburg Botanical Garden in 1905, and then in the KAS in 1917 and in subsequent years.
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In the USSR, in the last time, ginseng is introduced into cultivation in the Primorsky Territory at the Ginseng state farm and in Belarus at the Bolshoe Mozheikovo state farm. Experimental cultivation of it has been going on for many years in the reserves “Suputinsky” and “Kedrovaya Pad” of the Far Eastern Branch of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
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Composition of active substances . The main active ingredients of ginseng are glycosides (panaxaponin, panaquilon, panaxosides A and B). The roots contain essential oil, panaxic acid, mucus, resins, vitamins C, B 2 , B 3 , as well as radioactive substances and substances close to calamint. Experiments conducted in the Far Eastern Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences have established that the biological activity of cultivated ginseng is one and a half to two times lower than that of wild-growing.
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Application . Ginseng has long been very popular among Eastern peoples. The Chinese, for example, use wild ginseng in the treatment of many diseases, including tuberculosis. Ginseng preparations and alcohol tinctures are used for nervous exhaustion and atherosclerosis, as a tonic and stimulant for functional disorders of the cardiovascular system; mental illness, diabetes, dysfunction of the gonads in men. Ginseng significantly increases mental performance; increases the body’s resistance to the action of harmful factors (as an adaptogen).
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It is used in the form of tincture, liquid extract and powder from the roots. In China, moreover, it is used in the form of pills, ointments, as well as tea called ginseng (Turova, 1967).
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Agrotechnics of cultivation. Site selection. Ginseng is grown in cultivation or under the forest canopy or in open areas. When cultivating it in the forest, plantations are recommended to be placed on gentle slopes. The most favorable for ginseng are dry broad-leaved forests, in which coniferous trees are found (later they shade the plant until the leaves appear).
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In open areas, ginseng is grown exclusively under artificial shade using sheds (straw mats, wooden sheds and shields).
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Ginseng grows best on brown forest soils, well-drained, with a large layer of humus.
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Soil tillage . The area allotted for ginseng should be well cleaned of deadwood, dead wood and stumps, and then plowed to the full depth of the humus layer.
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Application of fertilizers . Under plowing when growing ginseng under the forest canopy, leaf humus is applied at the rate of 4060 t/ha. Superphosphate at a dose of 7080 kg/ha and potassium salt at 90100 kg/ha are mixed with leaf humus or rotted manure. On clay soils, along with organic fertilizers, another 100200 t/ha of coarse sand is added.
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reproduction. Both for growing ginseng under forest cover and for cultivating it in open areas with artificial shading, it will first be necessary to establish a nursery for growing seedlings, since seedling propagation is more reliable than sowing seeds in a permanent place in the ground. Under the nursery allocate areas on highly fertile sandy or loamy soils, clean of weeds, not infected with pests and diseases, not flooded with melt or rainwater, well protected from the winds. The nursery is marked across the ridges with distances of 10 cm between the grooves to a depth of 4 cm. Seeds are sown in the resulting grooves at a distance within 2 cm from one another. A week before the emergence of seedlings, the ridges are shaded. To do this, frames are installed at a height of 0.80.9 m from the soil plane on the southern side of the ridges and 1.21, 3 m from the north. Shields or grass mats 1.61.7 long and 1 m wide are laid on the frames.
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In order for ginseng seeds to sprout in the year of sowing, they will need to be stratified. Stratification is carried out in two stages. The first, warm, must take place in a heated room at a temperature of 1820 ° C.
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In the second (cold) stage, the physiological ripening of seeds occurs, after which they are kept in a moderately moist state until sowing. Such seeds germinate in 15-25 days.
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Growing ginseng on a plantation with artificial shading. The best planting period is September October, i.e. the end of the growing season while digging up the roots from the nursery and transplanting them to the plantation. Shading is removed a week before digging.
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Planting is carried out after the final preparation of the soil and marking the ridges with a feeding area of 20×20 cm.
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Plantation care . The first spring work is cleaning the ridges from the leaves with which they hid for the winter. 810 days before the onset of vegetation, shields are placed for shading.
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Harvest . Commodity value is represented by four-, five- and six-year-old roots, which are dug out in September October by hand with a pitchfork after the death of the above-ground part of the plant. Since the roots of ginseng soon rot, they are immediately dried after being dug up, sorted into large, medium, small, and washed. After that, the roots are treated with steam at a temperature of 80 ° C, while large roots are kept for 1 hour 50 minutes, medium ones 1 hour 20 minutes and Small ones 1 hour.
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Growing ginseng under the forest canopy. In the conditions of Primorsky Krai, the most suitable for this are the middle parts of the mountain slopes with medium-aged cedar-broad-leaved and broad-leaved forests. Seed preparation, seedling cultivation, tillage and care are basically the same as with artificial shading.
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Collection of wild ginseng . In August, when the fruits turn bright red and the stems turn bright green, ginseng is harvested in large quantities. Collectors traditionally store all dug up roots in boxes with earth and hand them over to the procurement centers in their raw form. After that, the ginseng roots are canned or dried in the sun.
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The quality of raw materials is determined by size, age and shape in accordance with GOST 351.
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Cultivation of seeds ”To obtain seeds, the berries, after their collection, are rubbed with coarse sand or on sieves and immediately washed from the pulp. Then they are dried in the shade and placed in glass bottles with wet washed river sand.
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Drying. After steam treatment, the roots enter the dryer, where they are laid out in a thin (one root) layer and kept at a temperature of 50-60 ° C until air-dry.
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Pack . The roots are packed in moisture-proof paper, placed in wooden or tin boxes and transported to their destination.
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Storage . Stored in a dry, well-ventilated area, packaged in 1 kg bags in cellophane bags, packed in 10 kg thick wooden boxes lined with paper on the shelves.
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quality requirements . In accordance with the State Pharmacopoeia X, the cultivated ginseng root should be fragile, taproot, up to 25 cm long, traditionally 0.72.5 cm in diameter, with two five large branches, less often without them. The “body” of the root is thickened, almost cylindrical, at the top with clearly defined annular thickenings. The outer surface of the root is longitudinally, rarely spirally wrinkled. The color is yellowish white.
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Allowed : extractive substances extracted with 70% alcohol, not less than 20%; moisture 13; total ash 5; roots, darkened and turned brown from the plane, 10%.