Planting Production, Identification and Quality Control of Medicinally Agricultural Products

Dear Colleagues,

Medicinal plants are an integral part of ecosystem service for humankind and represent one of the most important bioresources in our planet, in which nature's ability is fully unlocked to prevent/treat human diseases. In order to avoid over-exploitation of wild medicinal plant resourses and achieve the sustainable utilization of medicinal taxa, much more research and investment are urgently needed in the domestication, cultivation and breeding of medicinal plants. The globalization of traditional medicine and ethnomedicine is accelerating; however, in order to protect the rights and interests of consumers and ensure a safe use of medicinally agricultural products, it is imperative to strengthen identification and quality control research. Particularly, since the outbreak and spread of COVID-19 in December 2019, these have gained more recognition of their unique values in prevention and treatment of epidemic diseases. Today, considerable studies are focused on the quality evaluation of herbal medicines, which, however, cannot meet the growing demand for drug safety if problems such as pesticide residues and heavy metal contamination cannot be effectively tackled. Hence, the eligible medicinal plant cultivation pattern should be actively explored so as to solve the quality problems of herbal medicines from the source and sustainably provide quality products. In improving herbal medicine quality, the theory and methods of good agriculture practice (GAP), ecological cultivation, plant pharmacophylogeny, and plant protection of medicinal plants hold great promise.

This Special Issue aims to reflect the current progress in planting production, plant protection, and identification and quality control of medicinally agricultural products. The situation and characteristics of artificially cultivated medicinal plants will be reported, which can be compared with wild-harvested ones, and identification/authentication and quality control/enhancement of diverse medicinally agricultural products via different methods will be scrutinized and elaborated.

This Special Issue especially welcomes research based on omics and high-throughput technology, as well as the exploration of multidisciplinary technology combination.

We welcome submissions of different types of manuscripts including original research papers, reviews, and methods, focusing on, but not limited to, the following topics:

1. Advances and challenges in medicinal plant breeding, cultivation and planting production;
2. Production of bioactive plant secondary metabolites through in vitro and in vivo technologies;
3. Physical, chemical and biological methods for the identification/authentication of medicinal crops and medicinally agricultural products;
4. Identification of genes and compounds with agronomical/medicinal relevance in cultivated medicinal plants;
5. Quality control and improvement of medicinal crops and medicinally agricultural products;
6. Implementation of good agriculture practice, ecological agriculture and pharmacophylogeny in medicinal plant production;
7. Advances in disease epidemology, plant pathology, and integrated pest management in sustainable medicinal plants production.

Prof. Dr. Da-Cheng Hao
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• cultivation
• identification
• quality control
• medicinal plant
• agricultural products
• good agriculture practice