Licorice should not be stored for too long; the storage time of medicinal materials must be reasonably controlled

Licorice is generally stored as compressed bales wrapped in burlap, each weighing 50 kg, kept in a dry, ventilated place, with a safe moisture content of 12%-14% for the commodity. There are more than ten kinds of warehouse pests of licorice, including the coffee bean weevil, the brown mulberry borer, and the four-spotted chestnut borer. Fumigation with nitrogen or carbon dioxide for 514 hours can kill all adults and larvae, with no obvious change in the inner quality of licorice.

Licorice is prone to mildew. If the air humidity is too high, mold spots or white and green mycelium easily appear on the surface of licorice. The following measures can be taken for prevention and control: ensure the moisture content is below 14%, keep the relative humidity of the environment below 80%, use good sealed packaging, and adopt stacking and tent dehumidification; for chemical fumigation, use cubeb volatile oil in a 10000:1 ratio, sealed fumigation for 6 days, and the mold content will be greatly reduced.

The storage period of licorice should not be too long. Some people have studied Ural licorice during different storage periods and found that storage time has a direct impact on changes in glycyrrhizin content, decreasing as storage time lengthens: 5.12% for 1 year of storage, 4.24% for 2 years, and 3.08% for 3 years. It can be seen that the longer licorice is stored, the greater the loss of medicinal components. Therefore, licorice products should be sold as soon as they are harvested, and should not be stored for too long.