全 文 ：Framework for Sustainable Use of Medicinal Plants in China
Chang LIU, Hua YU, Shi鄄Lin CHEN*
( Institute of Medicinal Plant Development, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100193, China)
Abstract: China is the birth鄄place of Traditional Chines Medicine (TCM) and has a rich diversity of medicinal
plant resources. With the rapid increase in consumer demands for crude drugs and natural health products, many
medicinal plant species are threatened with extinction from overexploitation and habitat destruction. To ensure the
sustainable use of medicinal plant resources, we discuss in this article, a conservation framework consisting of conser鄄
vation strategies, cultivation practices and various technologies. Conservation strategies include establishing in鄄situ
and ex鄄situ conservation centers, setting up government policies and regulations, establishing methods for resource
surveying and trade monitoring and establishing and enforcing Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). In terms of tech鄄
nologies, we use a remote multi鄄level sensing system and DNA barcoding technologies as examples to demonstrate
their roles in the conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plant resources in China.
Key words: Medicinal plant; Conservation framework; Sustainable use
CLC number: Q 949. 9摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 Document Code: A摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 Article ID: 2095-0845(2011)01-065-04
摇 Medicinal plants are the primary sources of
many small molecule drugs and herbal products, and
their contribution to human healthcare is indispensi鄄
ble ( Chen et al., 2010; Nalawade et al., 2003).
Traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) are composed
of various combinations of medical plants and have
been used as natural remedies for thousands of years
(Xiao, 2002). The Chinese medicinal industry re鄄
presents a significant portion of the pharmaceutical
industry in China. There are 1 200 Chinese medi鄄
cine industrial enterprises that manufacture approxi鄄
mate 8000 Chinese herbal medicine products. The
annual total sales of functional food, TCM prepara鄄
tions, medicinal plant extracts and other processed
materials exceeds US＄ 40 billion. The costs of nat鄄
ural resources for these products is also significant
with an annual consumption of raw medicinal plant
materials reaching over 1 million tons. The growth of
the Chinese medicinal industry is manifested by the
growth of the TCM pharmaceutical enterprise. For
example, TongRenTong was established in 1669 in
just one house. Now it is a publicly treaded compa鄄
ny on the Hong Kong and New York Stock Exchan鄄
ges with annual sales exceeding US＄ 1 billion.
Today, there are many challenges facing the
conservation of medicinal plant resources from over鄄
exploitation and habitat destruction ( Srivastava et
al., 1996; Bentley, 2010). For example, 70% -
80% of natural materials were collected from the
wild to meet the annual demand of approximate 1
million tons (Balunas and Kinghorn, 2005). The
annual sales of these natural resources have in鄄
creased to more than 100 times the levels of 1980.
Many of these natural resources are derived from
species that are threatened, or have become rare or
endangered by large scale exploitation (Nalawade et
al., 2003; Cole et al., 2007). For example, spe鄄
cies like Chinese ginseng and Dendrobium are sel鄄
dom seen in the wild nowadays. Some species have
also become extinct. For example, wild Panax noto鄄
ginseng has not been found in the wild for decades
and is believed to have become extinct already
(Shim et al., 2005). Due to the lack of regulation,
herbal medicine resources in China are facing a cri鄄
植 物 分 类 与 资 源 学 报摇 2011, 33 (1): 65 ~ 68
Plant Diversity and Resources摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 DOI: 10. 3724 / SP. J. 1143. 2011. 10249
* Author for correspondence; E鄄mail: slchen@ implad. ac. cn; Address: No. 151 MaLianWa North Road, Haidian District, Beijing, China 100193
Received date: 2010-12-17, Accepted date: 2010-12-27
sis of sustainability. This is not isolated to China.
Based on a World Wide Life Fund Report (2004),
most herbs consumed by human are still obtained
from the wild (Lambert et al., 1997; Ross, 2005).
In Europe, there are over 1300 kinds of herbs used
by mankind, 90% of which are wild herbs (Balu鄄
nas, 2005 ). The collection and consumption of
herbs by mankind had already brought the danger of
extinction to 20% of known herbs (Newman et al.,
2000).
In the face of these challenges, Chinese gov鄄
ernment has taken prompt action. The government
issued “Guideline for Modern Development of Chi鄄
nese Medicines (2002-2010)冶 In the guideline, it
is mentioned that “ While fully utilizing the re鄄
sources, we must pay attention to protecting the re鄄
sources and the environment冶; “We must also con鄄
serve biodiversity and ecological balance, especially
to recover and regenerate Chinese medicine plant re鄄
sources that are seriously threatened or in short sup鄄
ply冶. Furthermore, the protection of and promotion
of sustainable utilization of Chinese medicine re鄄
sources has been listed as one of the six “ key
tasks冶. With the public release of this guideline,
research on the conservation of medicinal plants has
become a top priority.
As the research institute in China dedicated to
medicinal plants protection and development, we at鄄
tempted to build a Framework for Promoting Herbal
Medicine Conservation and Sustainable Use in Chi鄄
na. There are three specific goals for this frame鄄
work: (1) to guarantee the continuous supply of raw
materials to the Chinese medicine industry and the
market; (2) to meet the healthcare needs of the
Chinese people and (3) to secure a continuous use
of Chinese herbal medicines. Particularly, we intend
to set up several research platforms to achieve these
goals. These include: (1) establishing and applying
best practices for evaluation of the conservation sta鄄
tus and extent of Chinese plant resources for their
sustainable utilization; (2) studying herb conserva鄄
tion and diversity through molecular authentication
and phylogeny determination techniques; (3) estab鄄
lishing methodologies to survey herb resources; and
(4) developing technologies for the sustainable use
of herb resources.
As part of the framework, we established moni鄄
toring systems to closely monitor the change in me鄄
dicinal plant resources and the recovery of habitats.
These centers are critical for providing information
and the scientific basis needed for herb conserva鄄
tion, cultivation and management, and to promote
the recovery of medicinal plant habitats ( Li and
Chen, 2007). In addition, we have established in
situ conservation networks including areas for Au鄄
thentic / Aboriginal populations of medicinal species
(Chen et al., 2007). Currently, the network in鄄
cludes four conservation centers located in the Tibet鄄
an plateau for alpine medicinal plants; XinJiang
Province for medicinal plants of northwestern China;
ChangBai Mountain for medicinal plants of northeast鄄
ern China and GuangXi Province for medicinal
plants of southern China. An Ex鄄situ Conservation
Network has also being established, which includes
nine national medicinal plant gardens and material
collection centers located in Beijing, Guangxi,
Hainan, Yunnan, Xinjiang, Tibet, Jilin and Nan鄄
jing to expand scientific research, horticulture and
education. Finally, the establishment of the Beijing
National Medicinal Plant Seed Bank offers a simple
and cost鄄effective solution for seed conservation.
Below, we described some of the technology
platforms we have developed. First, we have devel鄄
oped a Multi鄄Level Remote Sensing System using
Unmanned Air Vehicle Remote Sensing Technology.
This system has been applied to survey the distribu鄄
tion of American ginseng and Glycyrrhiza uralensis.
First, using the unmanned air vehicle, we took pho鄄
tographs and then applied pattern recognition algo鄄
rithms to determine the distribution of Glycyrrhiza
uralensis (Wang et al., 2006). As a control, we
carried out a ground investigation to determine the
communities of G. uralensis+Sophora+Artemisia, G.
uralensis+Artemisia and G. uralensis alone. Compari鄄
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son of the survey results with the ground investiga鄄
tion results showed that our remote sensing and clas鄄
sification methods were 90% consistent with that of
ground investigation (Zhou et al., 2009), support鄄
ing the notion that the method is feasible for survey鄄
ing wild medicinal plants resources.
Second, we have developed DNA barcoding
technology for the authentication of medicinal
plants. DNA barcoding is a technology that has re鄄
cently gained great popularity in basic and applied
research. Research groups in our institute carried
out work to address several critical problems: (1)
what the best DNA barcode marker (s) for medici鄄
nal plants are; (2) whether or not the best markers
discovered for medicinal plants also work well in
much wide range of groups of plant; (3) how to ap鄄
ply DNA barcoding studies to the practical work of
medicinal plant maintenance and development.
The plant working group of the Consortium for
the Barcode of Life recommended the two鄄locus com鄄
bination of rbcL+matK as the plant barcode, yet the
combination was shown to successfully discriminate
among 907 samples from 550 species at the species
level with a probability of only 72% . The group ad鄄
mits that the two鄄locus barcode is far from perfect
due to the low identification rate, and the search is
not over. First, we compared seven candidate DNA
barcodes ( psbA鄄trnH, matK, rbcL, rpoC1, ycf5,
ITS2, and ITS) from medicinal plant species. Our
ranking criteria included PCR amplification efficien鄄
cy, differential intra鄄 and inter鄄specific divergences,
and the DNA barcoding gap. Our data suggest that
the second internal transcribed spacer (ITS2) of nu鄄
clear ribosomal DNA represents the most suitable re鄄
gion for DNA barcoding applications (Chen et al.,
2010). Furthermore, we tested the discrimination a鄄
bility of ITS2 in more than 6 600 plant samples be鄄
longing to 4 800 species from 753 distinct genera and
found that the rate of successful identification with
the ITS2 was 92. 7% at the species level ( Yao et
al., 2010). In conclusion, the ITS2 region can be
potentially used as a standard DNA barcode to iden鄄
tify medicinal plants and their closely related spe鄄
cies. We also propose that ITS2 can serve as a novel
universal barcode for the identification of a broader
range of plant taxa .
In our next study, we carried out a general a鄄
nalysis on the abilities of ITS2 to distinguish species
in a comprehensive sample set (Yao et al., 2010).
About 50 790 plant and 12 221 animal ITS2 se鄄
quences downloaded from GenBank (Release 176)
were evaluated according to sequence length, GC
content, intra鄄 and inter鄄specific divergence, and ef鄄
ficiency of identification. The results showed that the
inter鄄specific divergence of congeneric species in
plants and animals was greater than its corresponding
intra鄄specific variations. The success rates for using
the ITS2 region to identify dicotyledons, monocotyle鄄
dons, gymnosperms, ferns, mosses, and animals
were 76. 1%, 74. 2%, 67. 1%, 88. 1%, 77. 4%,
and 91. 7% at the species level, respectively. The
ITS2 region unveiled a different ability to identify
closely related species within different families and
genera. The secondary structure of the ITS2 region
could provide useful information for species identifi鄄
cation and could be considered as a molecular mor鄄
phological characteristic. As one of the most popular
phylogenetic markers for eukaryote, we propose that
the ITS2 locus should be used as a universal DNA
barcode for identifying plant species and as a com鄄
plementary locus for COI to identify animal species.
We have also developed a web application to facili鄄
tate ITS2鄄based cross鄄kingdom species identification
(http: / / its2鄄plantidit. dnsalias. org).
Last but not least, there are many other strate鄄
gies that will compliment the ones described above
for the sustainable use of herbal resources. Some of
them are as follows: establishment of natural nurser鄄
ies of medicinal plants (semi鄄wild cultivation); con鄄
servation through cultivation and Good Agricultural
Practice (GAP) (Li and Chen, 2007; Gao et al.,
2002); development of substitute species for threat鄄
ened medicinal plants (Caro et al., 2005); conser鄄
vation of traditional knowledge; development of
761 期摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 Chang LIU et al. : Framework for Sustainable Use of Medicinal Plants in China摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇
methods to sustainably harvest wild species ( Lea鄄
man, 2006 ); development of authentication sys鄄
tems; setting up of policies and regulations
(Schippmann et al., 2006); enhancement of public
education and awareness; provision of training and
increasing the number of experts in this area.
In summary, the current short review summari鄄
zes various efforts taken by our institute to face the
increasing threats of the depletion of herbal re鄄
sources. As we believe, with close collaboration a鄄
mong government agencies, research institutes and
pharmaceutical industries, we will be able to provide
natural resource in a sustainable manner to meet the
needs of human healthcare.
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