Locals in Kon Tum Province check ginseng plants they are growing on the Ngoc Linh Mountain.

Kon Tum Province in the Central Highlands plans to grow more than 11 million ginseng plants for propagation purposes by 2014.

Residents and governments of the Central Highlands have gone to great lengths to protect the Vietnamese ginseng that ethnic minorities once used like a cure-all without knowing that it was ginseng.

Locally, the plant was later named Ngoc Linh ginseng after the mountain where it grows.

The Sedang people live at the foot of the mountain. Every time a woman gets pregnant, or someone is bitten by a snake or attacked by wild animals, they would be brought to the village heads who were the only ones who knew how to process the plant and use it to treat ailments.

The secret became more widely known when the village heads showed French resistance soldiers in the area how to use the plant for curing malaria and gaining vigor, recalled war veteran Phan Quyet who stayed in the area from 1952-1953.

Nam, a veteran from the northern province of Ha Tay, has been living as a member of the ethnic community after his life was saved by the juice of the plant.

He had been unconscious for several days when he was fed the juice by a local woman is now his wife.

“The juice helped me gain consciousness,” Nam recalled. “My comrades were so surprised and happy to see me again. They thought I was dead.”

The perennial Ngoc Linh ginseng provides its most nutritious rhizomes, or root stems, after five years. The ginseng rhizome is believed to improve the immune system, prevent some cancers and extend the lifespan of cells.

The plant grows at an average height of 1.5-2 kilometers, mostly in Kon Tum Province but some can also be found in Quang Nam Province that the Ngoc Linh Mountain stretches to.

The ginseng became an object of research in 1968 when biologist Vu Duc Minh came across the plant and tasted the rhizomes.

Minh brought some to his laboratory and found that they quickly heal injuries and help people regain their strength.

Still, he didn’t know which plant it was and reported the findings to health authorities in the region.

In 1972 the authority set up an inspection group led by pharmacist Dao Kim Long to search for the plant.

The group spent five months living in the forest until a group member, Nguyen Thi Le, spotted the plant at a height of 1.8 kilometers.

She had slipped and grabbed a nearby plant to break her fall only to discover that it was the one they were looking for.

On the same day, the group found a thick layer of the plant and identified the plant as a variety of ginseng.

“I lay on the ginseng, there was ginseng beneath my feat and a huge area of ginseng in front of us,” Long said.

After some studies, Long concluded that the ginseng variety was native and named it Panax articulatus Kim Long Dao.

The ginseng was referred to by that name in all Vietnamese scientific materials until 1988 when professor Ha Thi Dung and her Russian research partner Grushvisky confirmed it was a new species of ginseng and gave it the new name Panax vietnamensis Ha et Grushv, or Panax vietnamensis for short.

To grow the specialty

Since the ginseng was identified and its value confirmed, people have been rushing to the mountain to dig up the plant, no matter how old it is and whether the rhizomes have formed or not.

The Kon Tum government in 1993 started a plan to protect and develop the ginseng habitat. In May 1998, another 0.4 hectares of ginseng was added. The plant is very difficult to grow and is very selective about what habitat it will thrive in.

More than 0.6 hectares were added in 1997 and early 1998, and almost 0.7 hectares from 1999 to 2001.

In April 2001, the Kon Tum Department of Science, Technology and Environment launched a project to grow more than 26,000 ginseng plants on 0.6 hectares and provide 24 local families with 7,550 plants for cultivation.

Then a local company invested some VND10 billion (US$562,900) in another project expected to run from 2005 to 2014.

Conferences on this ginseng variety have also been held to make people aware of the potential profits from plant, whose rhizome sells for about $4,000 a kilogram, if it is cultivated and protected properly.

Reported by Duc Huy – Hai Phuong