The drug must "be harvested in the correct balsamic time of the plant and with appropriate hygiene criteria, both of the operator and of the sanitary type: the plant must" be healthy, it must not have undergone any type of microbial or insect attack, dev " be collected in such a way as to present the parameters accepted by the Pharmacopoeia, with minimal mineral residues (earth, soil) and vegetables (part of the plant that does not represent the drug or plants other than the same source, as in the case of cultivation with the use of allelopathy) .
The more the harvest is effective, the more the harvest acquires value; if the plants are selected, the greater the possibility of determining a quality crop.
The limiting elements reside in the difficulty in obtaining a quality drug and are opposed to the favorable elements, linked to the methods or strategies to solve these difficulties. An ineffective and expensive mechanized harvest is for example aided by the genetic improvement of the crop. Then there are certain areas of the globe that are particularly suitable for the growth of medicinal plants, native or transferred to those places, because in any case those regions, in addition to enjoying an important and suitable territorial extension, favor their development. An example is coffee: widely used in herbal preparations to lose weight, as it has diuretic and exciting properties, it is part of anti-migraine pharmaceutical products; well, although coffee is a plant native to the Arabian Peninsula, what we know is represented in association with South American areas. Brazil, for example, is the largest producer of coffee in the world despite, as mentioned, the plant is native to the Arabian Peninsula. The extensive and intensive cultivation of coffee in Brazil gives the drug aromas and characteristics much appreciated by consumers .
Another example is given by the "aloe, which is of South African origin, but adapts very well to many areas that have a xerophytic climate, that is, arid and not very suitable for life; it is in fact a fleshy plant. The aloe is cultivated mainly in South Africa, North Africa and Barbados (Aloe barbadensis), but it is always aloe which produces juice and gel.
In Italy the most cultivated species are lavender (it grows very well in the high ground, on rocky, washed-out soils and a Mediterranean climate), mint and wormwood (they grow well in Piedmont), helichrysum, licorice (Calabria, Abruzzo and Sicily. ), manna (Sicily, a drug collected only from plants that grow in Mediterranean climates), bitter orange (of Asian origin and grown in Sicily) and bergamot (especially in Calabria, where it grows with very particular and valuable characteristics).
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