The Horticulture and Quality Control for Medicinal Plants

Dear Colleagues,

In addition to yielding plant-derived drugs, medicinal plants offer holistic approaches to healthcare and well-being, while also assuming significant roles in preserving cultural heritage and biodiversity conservation. Horticulture and quality control hold pivotal positions in the cultivation and production of medicinal plants, ensuring the potency, safety, and uniformity of botanical remedies. The horticulture of medicinal plants encompasses breeding and the cultivation of specific species or cultivars under suitable conditions to optimize their bioactive compounds. By managing factors such as soil composition, light exposure, and temperature, horticulturists can augment the concentration of therapeutic constituents in plants. Effective processing and storage also stand as critical components in preserving bioactivity. Simultaneously, the implementation of a range of quality control measures is imperative in order to ensure consistent potency and purity. Techniques including chromatography, spectroscopy, and biological tests are employed to analyze and quantify active compounds, thereby identifying variations that could impact the plant's medicinal efficacy.

Envisioned as a comprehensive update on this vital domain, this Special Issue will encompass the following pivotal topics related to medicinal plants: authentication and identification; biodiversity and the breeding of new varieties; cultivation; harvesting and processing; assessments for purity and contaminants; evaluations of stability and quality control using biological systems.

Dr. Yan Hong
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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.

• horticulture
• quality control
• medicinal herbs
• botanical remedies
• breeding
• cultivation
• agronomy
• processing of medicinal plants
• storage
• chromatography
• spectroscopy
• bioactive tests
• DNA barcoding
• authentication
• biodiversity
• standardization
• quantification of active compounds