沙漠研究 22-1, 263 -266 (2012 )"ICAL 1 / DT X"

Journal of Arid Land Studies－Refereed Paper－

Geo-environmental Investigation of Vegetated Area for Licorice andFundamental Consideration for Greening by Using Pipe-shaped Pot
Zentaro FURUKAWA*1), Kiyoshi OMINE2), Noriyuki YASUFUKU2), Taizo KOBAYASHI3),
Haruka KIYOTOMO1) and Atsushi SHINKAI1)
Abstract: This research is conducted for seeking the way of value added greening and stopping desertification. In order toaccomplish these purposes, in-situ investigation was conducted to grasp soil condition of arid land where licorice known forremarkable medicinal plant lives naturally. And based on the results of the investigation and cultural experiment in Japan,
fundamental consideration for greening by cultivating licorice and using “pipe-shaped pot” was conducted. This research wasconcluded that 1) Wild licorice can live around 10% of volumetric water content of ground within the depth of 1 m, 2) Wild licorice
can live low nutrition environment, 3) From the results of cultivation experiment in Japan, young licorice grew well under muchmoisture and nutrition in the ground, and 4) From the results of application for greening by using pipe-cultivation, it was suggested thatyoung licorice can grow well and height of 10 cm pipe was enough to support initial growth.
Key Words: Greening, Licorice (Glycyrrhiza uralensis), Pipe-shaped pot, Soil nutritive condition, Soil water condition

1. Introduction
Desertification is one of the remarkable global
environmental problems caused by climate change, overfishing, overgrazing and so forth. Such land-degradation
problem can be solved from the standpoint ofgeo-environmental engineering. And licorice, which is oneof the most useful medicinal plants were paid attention forvalue added greening. It lives mainly in Chinese andMongolian arid land (Fig. 1), and its root contains active
ingredient called glycyrrhizin (GC) used as the ingredient of
herbal medicine. However, the amount of licorice isdecreasing by overgrazing and over fishing, and these facts
caused desertification (Shoyama et al., 2002). Therefore, if
licorice is used for greening, stable supply of herbal medicine
and value-added greening will be able to succeed for the future.
Licorice has a characteristic which its root grows long anddeeply into the ground until its root can get the groundwater,
but there are many unknown geo-environmental parameterssuch as soil water and nutritive condition of habitat.
Therefore, in-situ investigation is needed for greening to grasp
soil water and nutritive condition of arid land where licorice
lives naturally. For that reason, investigation in Mongolia
was conducted to reveal the geo-environmental conditions ofhabitat
In addition, cultural experiment by using pipe-shaped pot
was conducted, which is known as suitable way of cultivation

Fig. 1. Licorice living in arid land.
Bayanhongor

S2S1S3

Southern area
Inv. on May 2010
S4S5 S6S7Bogd

Baatasgaan

50km

S8NE3NE5Mongolia

Ondorkhaan©Google MapBayanhongor

NE4100km

Fig. 2. Investigation map in Mongolia.

for licorice recently (Ozaki et al., 2005). Finally, from theresults of those investigation and cultural experiment by using
pipe-shaped pot in Japan, as the fundamental consideration forvalue-added greening, several cultural experiments were744 Moto-oka Nishi-ku, Fukuoka, Japan 819-0385

2) Faculty of engineering, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, JapanNE1
NE2Northeastern area
Inv. on Sep. 2010

* Corresponding Author: soil36civil@yahoo.co.jp

1) Graduate student/faculty of engineering, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

Ulaanbaartar

3) Faculty of engineering, Fukui University, Fukui, Japan100

licorice in southern and northeastern Mongolia can live under such
low-nutrition environment, it is assumed that natural licorice extends
the root to get nutrition in the soil such a strict environment.

Percentage by mass transit(%)

Southern area(site S3 30cm)

80Northeastern area(site NE 20cm)
160

Silica sand No.7
Silica sand+ Potting compost(a)Potting compost(a)402000.010.1

1101001000

104Grain size(μm)

Fig. 3.Grain size distribution

conducted in Japan to promote initial cultivation of licorice andtake root more quickly in the ground simulated arid sand.

2. Instruction about the Data Gotten from theInvestigations
To grasp the soil water, nutrient, and the other properties onarid land, field investigation in Mongolia was conducted onMay and September 2010 (indicated in Fig. 2). And
conditions of cultivation experiment in our laboratory wereselected based on the data gotten from these investigations.
2.1. Grain size distributions
Figure 3 shows the grain size distribution in arid land andsome kinds of soil used for cultivation experiment. As shownin Figure 3, the distribution of southern area in Mongolia issimilar to silica sand No.7. Therefore, Silica sand No.7 waschosen for cultural experiment in Japan written in next
paragraph in the hope that licorice grows well due to have
similar permeability to arid ground.
2.2. Soil nutritive conditionsTable 1(A) shows the nutrition facts of soils in Mongolia.
As the indexes of soil nutritive property, pH, EC (ElectricConductivity) and CEC (Cation Exchange Capacity) weremeasured. pH represents acidity of soil, EC is index of salinesoil, and CEC is retention of fertility.
In addition,exchangeable Ca, Mg, K, nitrate nitrogen (NO3-N) andavailable form of phosphoric acid (P2O5) were measured.
Exchangeable cation is a type of cation which can be gotten byplants. Table 1 show that the research area has highconcentrations of Ca, Mg, and these are high pH. In addition,compared with potting compost which general plants can begrown easier and faster, elution amount of Ca is higher.
Furthermore, CEC, NO3-N and P2O5 of the soils in arid ground arelower than potting compost (in Table (B)). From the fact that wild

2.3 Soil water conditions
Figure 4 shows volumetric water content of each depth innortheastern ground. It indicates that every depth of watercontent is lower than the condition to live general plants. Inaddition, as for the water content of ground surface in each site
had various values, the deeper the ground was, the smaller thedifference was. And the deeper parts of the ground hadaround 5% volumetric water content. These facts revealed
that it is strict for plants to catch the water within 1 m depth ofunderground such volumetric water content. Therefore, like
Figure 1, it is assumed that licorice can live by growing its root
deeply near the ground water.

3. Pipe-cultivation Experiment in Japan
From the results of in-situ investigation, licorice can live
under the environment that lower volumetric water content andnutrition compared with the condition that general plants live
healthily. In order to conduct the value added greening,
following indexes are needed that (1) Creating the environment
which licorice root can grow root deeply and quickly to get thegroundwater, and (2) Supplying licorice which has high GC
content stably and continuously. Therefore, consideration of
the cultural conditions which satisfies above indexes (1) (2) isneeded. As the method which can bring up good individuals,“Pipe-cultivation method” was selected. It is the way that
pipe-shaped pot is used for cultivation, and it has been
conducted experimentally in Japan recently. Since pipeshaped pot is narrow in width and long in length, the growth ofsecondary roots are restricted. It is therefore considered thatmain root for herbal medicine is harvested easily and prompted
to grow bigger and longer. According to this, it can besuitable to grow root of licorice well. And this way can beapplied to cultivate high-quality and fast-grown individuals inarid land.
3.1. Materials and method
The soils used for cultural experiment were silica sand No.
7, potting compost (a), and mixed soil which was mixed silica
sand and potting compost (a) by 1:1 compared by weight.
Figure 1 shows the grain-size distributions, Figure 3 showswater conditions of each soil, and Table 1 (B) shows thenutritive properties of these soils. According to Figure 1,
silica sand No. 7 has similar grain size distribution to arid sand,therefore it has similar draining ability and could be expectedthat licorice grown well.

Table 1. Soil nutritive condition (n=1).
(A) soils of investigation area

60

80

Pottingcompost(b)

49.9

14.6

21.37.37

8.09

6.35

0.67

0.23

0.29

1.57

CEC

meq/100g・dry

3.6

6.2

pH--

7.97

7.61

8.44

ECmS/cm

0.13

0.02

Ca

3380

1000

3504510

1410

1450

Mg

924113

1300

650

870

K57

193

15160

171

400

85

125

32590

35304

NO3 -N

33.2

6.1

0.7

90

27.4

1700

P 2 O5

60

10110

750

170

708

mg/kg・dry

Volumetric water content(%)
1015202530

2.5160
GC含有率
GCcontent

35NE1NE2NE3NE440

Silica sand+Pottingcompost(a)(Silica sandNo.7)
1.2NE5

Silica sand No.7(Pipe cultivation)
Potting compost(a)(Pipe cultivation)Silica sand+Potting compost(a)(Pipe cultivation)
Silica sand No.7
(Simulated arid ground)

100

Glycyrrhizin(GC) content(%)

Depth(cm)

20Pottingcompost(a)Units

2Rootweight
生根重根長length
Root140120
100

1.580
160
40

0.5

200
Silica sand No.7

Root weight(g), Root length(cm)05Northeasternarea(NE1 )

Items

Na0

Southernarea(S8 )(B) soils used for experiment
Simulated sand0Potting
Silica sand+compost(a) Potting compost(a)Fig. 4. Soil water condition of arid land and cultivation experiment.

Fig. 5. Growth of licorice with each soil condition (n=3).

And Table 1 (B) shows soil nutritive condition of each soil.
The soil included potting compost (a) has high CEC and otheringredient for the sake that plants grow well. On the other
hand, silica sand has low CEC and other ingredient like arid
sand. Potting compost(a) has much nutrition and water
holding capacity in order to grow general plants well, andmixed condition was hoped to have suitable nutritive conditionand draining ability of soil, and the reason of 1:1 mixture is in
the hope that the properties of two types of soil is revealed
equally. And the scale of pots used for experiment was 10 cm
diameter and 50 cm height (Furukawa et al., 2010).

since they were young. And based on these results,
application of pipe-cultivation in the arid land andconsideration for value added greening was conducted.

3.2. Results
Figure 5 shows the growth of licorice cultivated underthese conditions written above for 2 years. Evaluation itemsof growth are glycyrrhizin (GC) content, root weight, and root
length. The values in this figure are average from 3
individuals of same conditions. Figure 5 indicates thatlicorice cultivated by mixed soil had high root weight. On theother hand, the individuals cultivated by silica sand No. 7 hadlower items of growth. From these results, suitable soil waterand nutritive condition should be needed to cultivate licorice

4. Consideration for Value-added
Utilizing Pipe-cultivation

Greeningby

From the results of pipe-cultivation for 2 years shown in
Figure 5, as the application for value added greening wasconsidered by using pipe-shaped pot.
4.1. Materials and method
Figure 6 shows the conceptual scheme of the experiment.
The several pipes which have different height and diameter
were set on the small size cultivation field, which is silica sand,and young licorices were planted in the pot. The content of
the pipe was potting compost (b). The length of the roots inthe cultivation field and other growth, such as Figure 6, weremeasured after 3-months cultivation. The water condition is
the index of “small size cultivation field” shown in Figure 3,
and nutritive conditions are the indexes of “Simulated ground(Silica sand No.7)” and “Potting compost (b)” in Table 1.

needed to confirm these.

5. Conclusions

Fig. 6. Cultivation method.

Thin pipes

Bold pipes
60Pipes

2.5
25040

Root Weight
1.5
130

GC Content

20

0.5

1000000

20Roots

30

Edge of roots
Heigthtof pipes
Diameterof pipes

Root lengthin silica sand(cm)10Height of pipes(cm)GC content(%) Root weight(g)340

10cm 20cm 50cm

10cm 20cm 50cm

5cm(Thin)

7cm(Bold)

Fig. 7. Evaluation of licorice’s growth by using pipe-shaped pot.

4.2. Results
Figure 7 shows the result of the growth after 3-monthscultivation. The squares represent the height of pipes, andtriangles are root length. The triangles are growth in thesimulated ground. As shown in Figure 7, in case using pipes of
5 cm diameter and 10 cm height, the root could be grown over
30 cm in the simulated ground. These facts represent that thepromotion of initial root growth is valuable by using
pipe-shaped pot.
In addition, compared with diameter of pipes, theindividuals cultivated by 5 cm diameter were heavier than theindividuals cultivated by 7 cm diameter. It is assumed that
restriction effect revealed. Initial growth could be promoted
by less diameter, but it did not reveal that the root keep
growing and catch the groundwater and nutrient like natural
individuals. Therefore, more examinations are going to beThis research was conducted for vale added greening,
therefore in-situ investigation were conducted to grasp soil
environment of arid land where licorice lives and to consider
the suitable conditions for greening. In addition, in reference
to those investigation and pipe-cultivation experiment in Japan,
the fundamental experiment and consideration for greening
were conducted, The contents of these are several culturalexperiments to promote initial growth of licorice and take root
more quickly in the ground simulated arid sand by using
pipe-shaped pot.
The following conclusions were obtained from this study.
1) Natural licorice can live around 10% of volumetric watercontent of semi-arid ground within the depth of 1 m, andlicorice can take root longer than 1 m and get groundwater.
2) Natural licorice can live low nutrition environment3) From the results of pipe cultivation experiment in Japan,
young licorice grew well under much nutrition environment.
On the other hand, simulated arid sand (Silica sand No. 7)
couldn’t make licorice grow well.
4) From the results of application for greening by using
pipe-cultivation, it was revealed that young licorice grewwell and 10 cm of pipe height was enough to support initialgrowth.
For the future study, it should be considered that the way ofsupplying water to young licorice until it has grown longer tocatch groundwater.

Acknowledgement
The author would like to acknowledge financial support
from the project between Kyushu-University and Genkai town,and P&P (Kyushu University Interdicisciplinary Programs
Education and Projects in Research Development).
References
Shoyama Y. (2002): Intelligence and nature of Asia, KUARO,
25-59 (in Japanese).
Ozaki K. (2005): Cultivation of Glycyrrhiza uralensis by using
pipe-shaped pot, 2nd symposium on licorice, 12-20 (inJapanese).
Furukawa Z., Yasufuku N., Omine K., Kobayashi T. (2010):
Influences of differences of geo-environment on length andquality of licorice (Glycyrrhiza ularensis) root using
pipe-shaped pot, The 45th Japan National Conference on
Geotechnical Engineering, JGS , 1993-1994 (in Japanese).