The World’s Healthiest Ginseng

Panax ginseng enjoys immense popularity amongst consumers around the world. The superstar herbal ingredient is available in dietary supplement formulations as an adaptogen, health tonic, to improve energy and general wellness, and for enhancing memory and sex drive.

As for the starting material used to make the ingredient for dietary supplement application, the optimum collection time is 4-6 years after planting. This allows the Ginseng root (the medicinally important part of the plant) to adequately mature and deliver the most favourable concentration and proportions of the major active components, a group of saponins called Ginsenosides.

With so much time spent in the ground from planting until maturity and eventually harvest, Panax ginseng root has abundant opportunity for accumulating elements from the environment and is particularly vulnerable to absorption of organochlorine pesticides (OCP’s), namely pentachloronitrobenzene (PCNB, otherwise known as quintozene), lindane, hexachlorobenzene (HCB), hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH), aldrin, dieldrin, DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloro-ethane), chlordane as well as organophosphorous pesticides. Even when these agricultural control substances are not specifically applied to the plant itself during the growing phase, pesticides present in the soil from prior crop plantations or through run-off from adjacent fields can be found in the root material, thereby making their way into dietary supplement finished products containing the ingredient.