METHOD FOR HARVESTING PLANT ROOTS, PREFERABLY LICORICE, GROWING IN NATURAL BRUSHWOODS Russian patent published in 1998 - IPC

FIELD: harvesting of wild plants, such as licorice, and extraction of certified fractions used in pharmacy. SUBSTANCE: method involves laying out wild licorice brushwoods into strips with aged dominants, with age interval being 2-3 years; determining centers of mother roots in licorice brushwoods of more than 7 year age and marking centers with landmarks; determining areas of penetration of three, five, seven year old rootstock in brushwoods by partial shoots, brush sizes and height of vegetative stems; marking boundaries of two-three year old lands by means of rods in equally spaced relation to landmarks; working wild competing plants together with their weeds with three-five year dominance by means of bog harrow with cutter disks to blackhead laying depth for injuring horizontal roots; carrying out rotavation of soil within one-two years old dominance by means of rotavators to obtain 2 m width and 2-3 cm depth strips together with plant stems and roots; performing colmatage on these land strips by sowing germinated licorice seeds without scarifying seeds in the ratio of 1:1 at the rate of 220,000-250,000 pcs/ha (2 kg/ha); harvesting roots by digging and extracting certified fractions in dominants above seven years; extracting roots each two years in seven, five and three year old dominants; leaving land strips under colmatage as reserve; upon digging and extraction of certified roots, sowing perennial cereal grasses at seeding rate of 20-25 kg/ha. EFFECT: increased efficiency by retaining natural licorice brushwoods, increased productivity and economic safety of districts where licorice root is extracted. 2 cl, 1 dwg