Chinese medicinal herbs are known for being a natural and holistic way to treat what ails you. As demand grows for those types of herbs in the United States, agricultural research is exploring how to help North Carolina farmers not only grow the herbs but grow them on a large enough scale to be a profitable endeavor. That’s the main goal of one particular research project – a relatively new project that comes after decades of interest and research efforts.
So far, the research shows it’s not a far-fetched idea for Chinese medicinal herbs to become a profitable crop in the state. For starters, 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,” explained N.C. State University researcher Dr. Jeanine Davis. “Just like with so many other herbs, 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.
“So that’s 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. Specifically, the funding comes through the department’s New and Emerging Crops Program, which is a grant program approved by the N.C. General Assembly.
The project’s home base is the Mountain Horticultural Crops Research and Extension Center in Mills River just outside Asheville 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, explained Margaret Bloomquist, a research scholar in Davis’ program. Those trials are on the research station in Mills River, on another research station in Waynesville and also on two farms in Buncombe County – one where shade herbs are the focus and another for sun-loving species of Chinese medicinal herbs.
“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. “Many of these species are perennial root crops with unusual requirement. 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 that many of the herbs don’t have many disease or insect issues at this scale, and they 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. The perennial nature of many of the herbs is also interesting to growers looking to reduce labor and mitigate soil needs involved in turning over a field every season, she said. Even some of the harvest timeframes are positive attributes because they fall during times when other crops don’t need to be harvested and they provide season extension to diverse operations.
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 some seminars and buy-and-sell events put on by their program 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. He’s helped translate one of the major Chinese medicinal herb books into English so that people like Davis and Bloomquist can use it as an information source.
“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. “So when he comes through and checks on our plants, he is able to do an evaluation of the quality in a way that we are not experienced and trained enough to do.
“That’s what makes these so different. We’re used to working with crops like potatoes and tomatoes and peppers that all have USDA grade standards that tell you whether you’ve done a good job or not. 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.”
A next step is to dig deeper into post-harvest handling such as washing and drying the herb crops. Bloomquist said that could involve pursuing a follow-up grant.
For now, they’re focusing on the scope of the current project, which Davis said wouldn’t be possible without the funding from the New and Emerging Crops Program.
“The biggest chunk [of the grant award] goes to paying the staff to work on the project,” Davis said. “So it gives us the staff to do this work, and it allows us to maintain people in the program to develop that continuity that we need so someone becomes an expert within our program and we’re not just hiring temporaries to come in and work a season.”
Davis also said the grant funding pays for supplies and travel because the researchers need to get out and observe test sites and visit partners or field experts.
“Programs like mine don’t have operating budgets. When the public expresses an interest in something and wants us to work on something – whether it’s herbs or hops or ginseng – we have to go find the funding to make it happen,” Davis said. “It’s often hard to find funding for new crops. So this [New and Emerging Crops] program has been amazing to my program that exists primarily to do this – to explore new possibilities.”
A backstory that’s decades old
The roots of Davis’s work on Chinese medicinal herbs in North Carolina go back to at least the early 90s. Back then, ginseng scientist Che Xizhe from China was working in her research program at the station in Mills River, and he 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 Mountain Gardens, an 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.”
By the time Hollis died last fall, Davis had begun the current research project that got funding through the NCDA&CS New and Emerging Crops Program.
Before Davis got the grant, she and her team had been trying for several years to get funding to research Chinese medicinal herbs in North Carolina. Finally, in 2009 Mayland Community College offered a grant for some initial research. That project involved Hollis, Barry Thorne of Golden Needle acupuncture and herbal supply near Asheville, some local extension agents and even a consultant in New York – Jean Giblett of High Falls Gardens.
Giblett had encouraged Davis many times to do more exploration about whether Chinese medicinal herbs would grow well in North Carolina. She had her own experience with the topic, having worked with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
“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.”
At the time, the New and Emerging Crops Program didn’t exist, nor did the USDA Specialty Crops Block Grant Program, which Davis has also used to fund projects. So 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.
From left to right: Katie Learn, Lilly Derry, Mary Saunders Bulan, Jeanine Davis, Margaret Bloomquist, Aaron Perez, and Luping Qu.
“What we were really after was trying to see what plants would thrive where,” Davis said. “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. 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 continued to maintain the herbs that had been planted. Some additional funding helped with that maintenance and ongoing observations. Thorne continued to work with anyone growing Chinese medicinal herbs locally, and in his catalogue of herbs, he 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. “So that led us to the 2023 New and Emerging Crops Program grant.”