From Green Fertilizer to Good Valley:The Functional Evolution of Mung Bean
Based on the tradition that"medicine and food have the same origin",many of China's ingredients have medici-nal functions,and at the same time might have undergone functional evolution throughout history.Mung beans were originally used only as green fertilizer in history,and after a series of evolution,they finally became mainstream medicinal herbs and ingre-dients in the Ming and Qing Dynasties,no longer being served as fertilizer.The reasons for the evolution in the function of mung beans in different periods in history,on the one hand,lay in the fact that improvement of fertilizer application and fertilizer pro-duction technology in China during the Ming and Qing Dynasties brought about more varieties of fertilizers and the function of mung beans as a green fertilizer was gradually diluted;On the other hand,that since the Ming and Qing dynasties the natural en-vironment deteriorated,mung beans,known for their strong stress resistance,played an important role in various agricultural dis-asters and had a great advantage in terms of planting costs.Therefore,they became increasingly popular both as an ingredient and as a medicinal herb.This paper provides a new approach for similar studies by considering the impact of changes in the eco-logical and social environments on the evolving functions of herbal ingredients from the perspectives of both pharmacological and agronomic history.
mung beanfood therapyfunctional evolutionstress resistance
万方数据
维普
