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Synonym: crab.
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Description. Madder tinting is a perennial herbaceous plant from the Rubiaceae family, 60130 cm high. The rhizome is horizontal, brown, many-headed, with a branched root. Stems are tetrahedral, prickly-rough, branched, with thorns bent backwards. The leaves are broadly lanceolate, whorled, at the base narrowed into a short petiole, along the edges and below, prickly-rough, pointed, rigid. The flowers are small, placed in axillary branched semi-umbels. Corollas spike-shaped, yellowish-green, five-parted. The fruit is a bone-shaped black berry. Weight of 1000 seeds within 2530 Blossoms in June-July; fruits ripen in August September.
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Medicinal raw materials: rhizomes.
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biological features. Madder dye is a warm and moisture-loving plant. Young seedlings may suffer from late spring frosts. Already in the first year of life, madder partially bears fruit, and in the second and 30% year of culture, fruiting is complete.
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Habitat. It grows along the banks of rivers, irrigation canals, among shrubs, along forest edges, damp places.
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Spreading. It is found wild in Southern Europe (Mediterranean countries), also in Iran, Afghanistan, Asia Minor and Central Asia.
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In the USSR, according to V. B. Kuvaev and P. X. Vekova (1968), madder is common in Dagestan, in the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Karabakh, in the northern and central regions of the Azerbaijan SSR, in the Crimea, and in Ukraine. It is found in the wild in the Caucasus.
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In later years, madder began to be cultivated in culture in the southern regions of Ukraine, in Central Asia and in the Krasnodar Territory.
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Composition of active substances. The rhizomes of madder dye contain 56% oxymethylanthraquinones and their derivatives ruberitric acid, consisting of a-xylose, a-glucose and alizarin; purpurin, haliosin, xanthopurpurine, rubladin-glycoside, etc.
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Application.Madder dye was very popular back in the Middle Ages, since beautiful dyes were made from its roots, with which fabrics were dyed in all sorts of colors, only sometimes it was used as a medicine. Later, when the chemical industry began to artificially produce the red dye alizarin, the cultivation of madder was stopped. However, in the Caucasus, a Georgian variety close to madder grows in a wild state, which is still used in folk medicine. Madder Georgian is a perennial herbaceous plant with a creeping, woody rhizome from the upper part of the tap root. Recently, clinical and pharmacological tests have established that the roots of madder dye, having diuretic and antispasmodic properties, are very valuable in the treatment of nephrolithiasis, and the pharmacological committee allowed the use of an extract from them in medicine. Therefore, at present, the roots of madder dye are widely used for both kidney stone and gallstone diseases and gout. Possessing diuretic and antispasmodic properties, products from madder dye loosen (dissolve) phosphate kidney stones and promote the excretion of phosphate, oxalate and other salts from the body.
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The chemical industry obtains from the roots of madder dye all kinds of dyes from pink to purple (rubianin, rubiacin, rubiagin, rubiflovin, verotin, rubfetin, etc.)
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Agrotechnics of cultivation. Site selection. Madder is placed in crop rotations with perennial crops: medicinal, perennial fodder, etc. It can be cultivated for at least three to four years. It is possible to place the madder in the zapolny wedge. The best forerunners can be busy fallows, crops running through a busy fallow, also row crops or vegetables vacating the field early.
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Soil tillage . Under the culture of madder, the soil is prepared according to the system of autumn plowing to a depth of up to 30 cm, since its roots lie in the arable layer up to 35 cm. On soils with a shallow arable layer, the main plowing is carried out to its entire depth. Before sowing, the field is harrowed, then cultivated to a depth of 6 8 ar, followed by harrowing. In the case of planting rhizomes, cultivation is carried out to a depth of at least 810 cm.
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Application of fertilizers . Under the madder, as a crop demanding on soil fertility, a sufficient amount of fertilizer should be applied. Organic fertilizers in the form of manure or compost are applied directly under the madder or under its predecessor at a dose of 20 t/ha. In addition, under the main autumn plowing, mineral fertilizers are applied at the rate of nitrogen 45, phosphorus 60 and potash 60 kg/ha.
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Reproduction. Sow the seeds of madder dye directly into the soil. Do this in early spring with row spacing of 60 or 45 cm; sowing rate 1520 kg/ha, seeding depth 45 cm. For sowing, seeds should be used in the last harvest, otherwise they do not give friendly shoots due to partial loss of germination during storage. On the eve of sowing, it is recommended to treat seeds with granosan (2 g per 1 kg of seeds) or AB product (3 g per 1 kg of seeds).
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You can propagate madder and rhizomes that are dug up on old plantations. The rhizomes are planted in early spring along a previously unmasked field in pieces 68 cm long. They are laid in furrows 810 cm deep with a distance of 1015 cm from each other.
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Plantation care. On the crops of the first year of life, immediately after the emergence of seedlings, they are sharovka, and then weeding the rows and three or four loosening of the row spacing throughout the summer.
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On transitional plantations, plant residues are removed in autumn; in order to create optimal conditions for overwintering, hilling is carried out, and in winter snow retention.
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Harvest. Rhizomes are harvested in the second-30% year of life in late autumn or early spring before the plants begin to grow. For convenience, the above-ground parts are preliminarily mowed and the field is freed from them. Roots and rhizomes are plowed with moldless plows or beet lifters, cleaned from the ground and above-ground mass and washed in special washing drums.
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Growing seeds . To obtain seed material on transitional plantations, the best herbage plots are allocated. When the seeds ripen, they are harvested, dried, sorted, brought to sowing conditions.
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The best climatic conditions for the cultivation of Georgian madder are in the coastal regions of central and southern Dagestan. In a number of regions of Dagestan, furrows with a depth of 2030 cm and ridges are still preserved, on which madder was previously cultivated; in some places it is cultivated at the present time as a dye for carpet production (the village of Rukel, Tabasaran region).
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Drying of roots and rhizomes is carried out in fire dryers at a temperature within 50 ° C, and if they are not available in attics with good ventilation.
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The yield of the air-dry mass of raw materials (rhizomes and roots) is approximately up to 1012 centners per hectare from 2-3-year-old plantations.
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Pack. Packed in bales or bales of 5075 kg.
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Store in a dry, well-ventilated area when unpacked. Bales (bales) are stacked on racks or pallets.
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quality requirements . In accordance with MRTU 42, No. 67062, the madder raw material should consist of dried longitudinally wrinkled cylindrical rhizomes of various lengths (not less than 1 cm) with a thickness of 310 mm. Outside, they are reddish-brown, brown-red bark and orange-red wood are visible in the break, odorless, sweetish, and after a while bitter in taste.
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In dried raw materials it is allowed: moisture 13%; pieces less than 1 cm 5 long; darkened roots 5; organic and mineral impurities, 1 each; extractive substances not less than 10%.