Bioscience Evidence 2026, Vol.16, No.4, 304-315 http://bioscipublisher.com/index.php/be 309 Water management also affects material accumulation in D. officinale. Considering its special water adaptation mechanism, cultivation systems should maintain sufficient substrate moisture while avoiding long-term waterlogging. Water-related environmental indicators show clear relationships with major medicinal quality components, indicating that appropriate water supply is an important basis for quality formation. With the development of facility agriculture, fertigation systems and precise nutrient supply technologies are increasingly applied in D. officinale production. By monitoring root-zone conditions in real time, these technologies can reduce water and fertilizer waste and improve production stability. 4 Typical Cases 4.1 Utilization of local germplasm and environment-adaptive variety improvement During long-term natural selection, wild germplasm resources have developed strong adaptability to specific ecological conditions, including responses to temperature variation, water availability, and disease pressure. However, wild resources usually show disadvantages such as slow growth, low yield, and unstable performance, which limit their direct application in large-scale production. Chen et al. (2026) conducted a new variety breeding study based on elite wild D. officinale resources collected from Yandang Mountain, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province (Figure 2). The research team first screened superior plants from wild populations, followed by self-purification and systematic selection to obtain stable lines. These selected materials were further propagated through tissue culture, resulting in the development of a new cultivar named “Tiefeng No.1”. From 2019 to 2023, multi-year regional comparative trials were conducted at several production sites. Yueqing, Zhejiang Province, a traditional production area of D. officinale, was selected for evaluating the production adaptability of the new cultivar. In the trials, “Tiefeng No.1” was compared with a locally dominant cultivar from Yueqing and “Xianhu No.2”. Agronomic traits, yield performance, and quality indicators were evaluated among different materials. The main quality-related parameters included dry matter content, polysaccharide content, mannose content, and anthocyanin content. Figure 2 Plant morphological characteristics of ‘Tiefeng No.1’ ((A): whole plant phenotype, (B): stem and leaf phenotype) (Adopted from Chen et al., 2026) “Tiefeng No.1” showed relatively stable quality performance across different cultivation environments. Its polysaccharide content ranged from 44.35% to 58.55%, and mannose content ranged from 14.03% to 22.38%, both meeting the quality requirements of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia (2020 edition). The anthocyanin content of “Tiefeng No.1” reached 94.76-115.43 μg/g, which was approximately twice that of the Yueqing local cultivar. In addition, “Tiefeng No.1” showed better cold tolerance and disease resistance, maintaining relatively stable growth and quality characteristics under variable production conditions. 4.2 Regulation of medicinal quality by cultivation environment and ecological factors In natural habitats, D. officinale usually grows in mountain forests, on rock surfaces, and in other specialized ecological environments. With the expansion of artificial cultivation, production systems have gradually shifted
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