Research Advances in Resource Chemistry and Utilization of Genus Glycyrrhiza
The plants of Glycyrrhiza and their products, which were regarded as valuable natural resource, have been widely applied to many areas including biological medicine, food industry, pastoral industry and animal husbandry.In recent years, great successes of researches on resources of the genus Glycyrrhiza were achieved.However, due to the destruction of ecological environment and uncontrolled consumption on Glycyrrhiza, resource scarcity of the plant had become a serious problem.In this paper the authors thoroughly summarized the advances of species, resource distribution, chemical compositions and their bioactive actions, and multi-ways comprehensive utilization etc.based on the thoughts of resources chemistry of Chinese medicinal materials.These data would provide some scientific data and references for the further research on the exploitation and comprehensive utilization of plants resources in genus Glycyrrhiza.