Thursday, March 28, 2024

Legendary herb offers forest options

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With more than 2000 years of Chinese use as a tonic and medicine ginseng is a herb familiar to the world’s fastest-growing consumer market, one increasingly seeking traditional therapies and tonics for a growing list of modern ailments.
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The fact it appears to grow exceptionally well in New Zealand under the canopy of pine tree forests only adds to the appeal this ancient herb offers as a marketer’s dream and a forester’s cashflow booster. Richard Rennie gained an insight to the herb’s potential at the country’s inaugural Ginseng Symposium.

The harvested root of ginseng has long held medicinal and healing properties valued by the Chinese and Koreans who see it as a cure for ailments including memory, fatigue, menopause symptoms and diabetes to name a few. Globally, the ginseng market for both the raw root and processed product is valued at more than US$2 billion.

For Glen Katu, chief executive of Pure-ora Mountain Ginseng of Te Kuiti, it might also prove to be an answer to iwi needs for employment in regions otherwise bereft of job opportunities. 

Katu heads the King Country iwi business established when parent corporation Maraeroa C worked with Crop and Food on a project trialling growing the herb under pine trees in 2006. The iwi’s forest, covering 5555ha, provided plenty of space to trial ginseng.

In establishing the ginseng plantings Katu was encouraged by the knowledge China is increasingly short of wild ginseng, with forested areas being cut back in the traditional growing area of the Chang Bai mountains in northeast China. 

“With wild ginseng now quite rare, wild-simulated ginseng is the next best thing. Ninety five percent of ginseng is grown with fertiliser and chemicals and only 5% is wild-simulated. In China it takes 14 years to grow versus seven years in NZ thanks to fewer frosts and a longer growing window.”

Katu also noted the strong spiritual links Maori share with Chinese in terms of life force, described as qi by Chinese and mauri by Maori, along with a link to natural herbal medicine use in both cultures.

He was reluctant to expand on earlier efforts by investors to grow more than 100ha of ginseng under shade cloths between Bay of Plenty and Waikato. However, he was considerably more upbeat about iwi efforts under the established, natural cover of central North Island pine trees.

“We think there is a very good correlation between ginseng and pines but just have not had the chance yet to study how it goes under other trees. It also appears very few other crops are suited to grow with ginseng.”

The first harvest of early trial crops took place in the autumn of 2014 and 2015 with yields aligning with predictions. Tests indicate high levels of the ginseng active, ginsenoside, in the harvested roots sent to a food company for further processing and packaging into the company’s range of ginseng products. 

They include ginseng honey, lozenges, tonics and a ginseng cosmetic range. 

Iwi are encouraged by positive talks with Chinese trade authorities for access, with a response earlier this year inviting negotiations to begin.

“It is culturally significant to the Chinese and they have a shortage of wild ginseng,” Katu said.

One of NZ’s most established ginseng growers, Stuart Mirfin of Nelson said ginseng is not indifferent to the plants growing over it and appeared to favour good soils that might once have had native totara trees growing in them.

“Some of our other native plants would not be so good, such as beech forest areas.”

He cautioned ginseng likes moisture but abhors wet feet, with seed requiring two winters’ exposure before germinating.

Mirfin’s own knowledge has come through 20 years of trial and error. 

He has determined the plant does best with the almost contradictory indicators of a low soil pH and high calcium levels, much of it coming from pine needles.

He lamented NZ’s monocultural, cropped approach to forestry and said a mixed-age forest might lend itself well to ginseng cropping over periods not limited to a pine forest’s lifespan.

“If I was not so old I would plant in a deciduous forest but growing trees is not an old man’s job and it’s the same for ginseng.”

Katu said the labour requirement with ginseng comes at each end of its lifespan, planting and harvest seven years later.

Mirfin noted it is not a cure all for all ailments and Western research into its medicinal effectiveness is thin on the ground. 

However, he pointed to some research that indicated a positive link between ginseng intake and a reduction in the instance of breast cancer and Russian research indicating it gives greater tolerance to radiation and chemotherapy treatment.

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