Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Areas of patchy fog. Low 52F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph..
Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Areas of patchy fog. Low 52F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.
Updated: December 16, 2024 @ 6:08 pm
A research assistant tends to Chinese medicinal herb root crops at the Mountain Research Station in Waynesville.
A research assistant tends to Chinese medicinal herb root crops at the Mountain Research Station in Waynesville.
Chinese medicinal herbs are known for being a natural and holistic way to treat various ailments, and as demand grows for those types of herbs in the United States, agricultural research is exploring how North Carolina farmers grow the herbs on a large enough scale to be a profitable endeavor.
There are geographic and climatological similarities between western North Carolina and areas in China where medicinal herbs grow.
“The goal is to contribute to the limited commercial production resources that are available for growing Chinese herbs in North Carolina,” said N.C. State University researcher Jeanine Davis. “When people go to produce them commercially, the material available to them is all home-gardener information and what works for a few plants or a little home garden isn’t necessarily practical or feasible on a commercial scale. “What we’re trying to do is help with production on a commercial scale and provide a new opportunity for farmers to explore a new crop.”
A grant from the North Carolina Department of Agriculture is funding the research project at the Mountain Horticultural Crops Research and Extension Center in Mills River where Davis is an associate professor and extension specialist in the Department of Horticultural Science at N.C. State University.
To reach the goal of moving toward commercial production, a big focus is on yield trials that help figure out how productive the herbs can be in the state, said Davis’ fellow researcher Margaret Bloomquist.
“Another focus is to source and propagate the plants to have the quantity needed for commercial production because another gap is the lack of availability of seeds and planting stock for Chinese medicinal herbs in North America,” Bloomquist said. “These types of crops may present a learning curve for farmers, so we’re working on establishing best practices in regard to growing perennial root crops in our current agricultural system.”
The growing efforts have revealed many of the herbs do not have disease or insect issues at this scale and require little fertilizer relative to other crops. Bloomquist said the low-input nature is especially appealing to small growers, those who have been in vegetable production and those interested in organic farming.
Davis and Bloomquist said Asheville and surrounding mountain areas already have Chinese herb gardens and practitioners who use and sell Chinese medicinal herbs. There have also been seminars and buy-and-sell events where growers can connect with users, buyers and other growers.
A partnership with Thomas Avery Garran has also been helpful. Garran lived in China for many years before returning to the United States and has helped translate one of the major Chinese medicinal herb books into English.
“He’s been a great partner because he was able to – with all his contacts in China – help find sources for seeds for the project. He’s really knowledgeable about these plants. He is an herbalist, so he also knows how to use them,” Davis said. “Having these herbalists that really know the herbs come, they can smell it and taste it and look at it and give us a good quality assessment.”
Davis said the current project would not be possible without the funding from the New and Emerging Crops Program that pays for supplies and travel to observe test sites and visit partners or field experts.
The roots of Davis’ work on Chinese medicinal herbs in North Carolina go back to at least the early 90s when Chinese ginseng scientist Che Xizhe was working at the Mills River station and started exploring whether any of the vegetables or other plants on the station had medicinal properties.
By 1992 the curiosity led to working with Joe Hollis who operated the Mountain Gardens apothecary and medicinal herb gardens in the Mount Mitchell/Burnsville area. As exploration turned to research, Hollis was a consultant for Davis and her team until he died in November of 2023.
“He was one of the most knowledgeable people about Chinese medicinal herbs that I’ve ever met,” Davis said. “We spent a lot of time with Joe talking about Chinese herbs and similarities of plants in China and here in North America.”
Before Hollis’s death last fall, Davis had already started the current research project funded through the New and Emerging Crops Program.
In 2009, Mayland Community College offered a grant for some initial research that involved Hollis, Barry Thorne of Golden Needle acupuncture and herbal supply near Asheville, some local extension agents and consultant Jean Giblett of High Falls Gardens in New York.
Giblett had encouraged Davis many times to do more exploration about whether Chinese medicinal herbs would grow well in North Carolina.
“Every time we met at a conference, she would bring it up (and say) ‘Jeanine, you need to do this,’” Davis explained. “And we wrote so many grant proposals together and with others for years trying to get funding, but nobody was interested because it wasn’t a thing yet.”
The grant from Mayland Community College made it possible to plant Chinese medicinal herbs in western North Carolina to test their success and propagate plants.
“We found that some things did really, really poorly here in the southern mountains, but you got up into a much higher elevation and they did really well,” Davis said. “When we had visitors come in from China they were not surprised at all by those results.”
In the years since that project, members of Davis’s crew have continued to maintain the herbs that had been planted. Thorne continued to work with anyone growing Chinese medicinal herbs locally and in his catalogue of herbs designated which herbs he sourced from the region.
“It’s still hard convincing practitioners that we can produce the quality of herbs that may be superior to material we’re getting imported,” Davis said.
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