Gastrodia elata is a precious Chinese medicinal material with medicinal value for treating dizziness, limb numbness and convulsions in children. Since Gastrodia elata has no roots and green leaves, it cannot perform photosynthesis to produce nutrients, and how it grows has always been a mystery. For more than 2,000 years, medicinal farmers have tried countless times to cultivate Gastrodia elata artificially, but without exception, they all ended in failure.
In 1958, Xu Jintang graduated from Shanxi Agricultural College and was assigned to work at the Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. At that time, the domestic wild gastrodia elata resources were nearly exhausted, and the supply was cut off for three consecutive years, and artificial breeding was imminent. Xu Jintang, who was in danger and ordered to drill into the depths of the mountain, after 6 years, found the mycelium bundle from the rotten female hemp (aged tuber of Gastrodia elata), and isolated Armillaria from it. In 1973, in Ningqiang County, Shaanxi Province, he developed a method of using Armillaria to accompany Gastrodia elata.
This method of asexual reproduction seems to solve the problem, but after many generations, there will be species degradation, serious diseases, and reduced yields. Sexual reproduction methods must be fully overcome. As a kind of orchid, the seeds of Gastrodia elata have no endosperm, and are extremely small, as fine as dust. There are as many as 50,000 seeds in one fruit. Without endosperm, it means that the seed has no nutrients and cannot germinate on its own.
At that time, it was generally believed that Gastrodia elata germinated by absorbing the nutrients of the leaves in the humus, but Xu Jintang found that the germination rate of seeds in different places was very different, so he collected the sprouted leaves of the Gastrodia elata seeds from various places and isolated the fungi growing on them.
After strain screening, the germination rate of seeds has skyrocketed, but the mechanism behind it is still half-covered. Xu Jintang and his students spent 8 years researching, until one day they found several small mushrooms growing on the leaves of the Gastrodia elata seeds, which were sent to the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to be identified as small mushrooms. It took Xu Jintang another 5 years to solve the mystery of the sexual reproduction of Gastrodia elata. It turned out that when Gastrodia elata seeds germinate, they can only use the nutrients decomposed by A. serrata, and the germinated protocorm (the second stage after the germination of orchid seeds) germinates vegetative propagation stems, which must be inoculated with Armillaria to provide nutrients. , in order to continue to grow normally.
Xu Jintang studied Gastrodia elata throughout his life and was known as the "Father of Gastrodia elata". After retiring in 1998, he continued to study topics such as improving the germination rate of seeds, substitutes for fungal materials and improving cultivation methods. In just over 2 years, he published 7 papers , won 3 achievement awards, and won the second prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award in 2001.
Afterwards, a reporter went to Xu Jintang's house to conduct an interview, and saw stacks of manuscript papers stacked on the floor of the study. Each manuscript paper contained only three or four lines, and the bottom dozen lines were empty. When the reporter asked Xu Jintang why, his explanation was very simple: "My research on Gastrodia is not deep enough. There are too many unknown things. What I wrote now may be wrong, so I have to leave it blank so that I can correct it in the future."
.jpg)