Improvement of Hot Air Drying on Quality of Xiaocaoba Gastrodia Elata in China

摘要

As a perennial herb, gastrodia elata is distributed in most parts of China. Its tuber is a valuable Chinese herbal medicine, and controlling its dryness is the most critical factor to ensure the quality of storing gastrodia elata. This paper takes Gastrodia tuber drying as the research object, and attempts to improve the local processing method which is hot air drying by coal heated. Our team use electricity instead of coal as the energy for hot air drying and takes 50 ° C for drying under constant temperature. Experimental results show the appearance and the polysaccharide content of gastrodia elata are not improved, however, that the processing time has been reduced by one third, and the gas-trodin content in boiled gastrodia elata is significantly higher compared to local drying method.