Licorice (Glycyrrhiza): Botany, Distribution and Ecology, with a Regional Account of Uzbekistan and the Lower Amu Darya

Abstract

Licorice root comes from three closely related species of Glycyrrhiza (Fabaceae): G. glabra, G. uralensis and G. inflata. G. glabra is the western species; Kew lists it as native in more botanical regions than the other two, a count that does not measure area. This review brings together the Flora, taxonomic databases, peer-reviewed studies and official documents on their taxonomy, morphology, reproduction, range, ecology and resource status, with a regional account of Uzbekistan.

Current treatments recognise between 13 and about 29 species; Kew accepts 16. A plastid-based estimate dates the splits among the medicinal species to less than a million years ago, and they hybridise where their ranges meet. G. glabra is native from Italy to Mongolia, including all five Central Asian republics. It is a clonal, nodulated perennial of floodplains, tugai and saline meadows that tolerates drought and salt; in Kazakhstan's tugai it is recorded over shallow groundwater.

Wild stands have shrunk in Kazakhstan, Karakalpakstan and China. In Karakalpakstan natural habitat fell from 38,000 ha in the 1960s to 6,500 ha in 2020, a loss the reporting review attributes to excessive harvesting without giving data on causes. Other sources name different causes: along the Amu Darya, changing water availability and the use of tugai land; in Kazakhstan, river regulation, ploughing of stands for crops and over-digging. After industrial demand fell, two monitored areas in southern Kazakhstan more than doubled their stock in 19 years.

Of the three medicinal species, Kew lists only G. glabra for Uzbekistan. Flora of China and USDA list G. glabra and also G. inflata, but no specimen of G. inflata from the country was found. Of the 357 Uzbek occurrence records of the three species, 347 are G. glabra, 182 of them from one collection devoted to it; the other ten are G. uralensis specimens from Kashkadarya, in the south. All 84 GBIF records of the three from Khorezm (16) and Karakalpakstan (68) are G. glabra, 64 of them from that same collection. Such records show what collectors have documented, not the make-up of the stands; no survey of species composition or of hybrids was located. The only chemical field survey of Uzbek licorice that was located, published in 2003, studied plants identified as G. glabra at a single habitat. Every underground sample contained glabridin, the marker of the species, and glycyrrhizin in single samples ran from 3.3 to 6.1%, on both sides of the 4.0% European Pharmacopoeia minimum that applies to a lot (one batch of root). No assay of Uzbek plantation root was found; the comparisons located elsewhere report less glycyrrhizin in cultivated than in wild root, though none is known to have controlled plant age or site.

In Khorezm, on the lower Amu Darya, monitoring wells in irrigated farmland, read from 1990 to 2006, showed a water table roughly 1–1.5 m down on average and moderately saline groundwater. That setting resembles the habitat recorded for the species elsewhere, as do irrigated lowlands across Central Asia. No test of the resemblance in the licorice stands themselves was found, nor any stock or area estimate for Khorezm. A survey of the stands that records their area, root stock, water table and salinity would answer both, and root assays from the same plots would give the first chemistry tied to a named site in the region.

Keywords: Glycyrrhiza glabra; Fabaceae; licorice; taxonomy; tugai; groundwater; Amu Darya; Khorezm; Karakalpakstan; Uzbekistan; glycyrrhizin

1. Introduction

Licorice (British spelling: liquorice) root is dug from wild stands as well as grown as a crop. In Kazakhstan the trade rests on wild collection (Gemedzhieva et al. 2021), while in China cultivated root became the primary source after wild stands were over-harvested (Wu et al. 2025). Supply therefore depends on the biology of the plant and on the places where it grows; how far quality does is taken up in section 8.

The European Pharmacopoeia defines the drug as the dried root and stolons of Glycyrrhiza glabra L. and/or G. inflata Batalin and/or G. uralensis Fisch. ex DC., with at least 4.0% 18β-glycyrrhizic acid in the dried material (quoted by EMA/HMPC 2026). One commodity name therefore covers three closely related species, spread from the Mediterranean to northern China. The three have not always been covered equally. The World Health Organization's 1999 monograph covers G. glabra and its varieties and G. uralensis; it left G. inflata out because published studies of that species were then rare (WHO 1999). The current European assessment covers all three. Its historical account opens with a sentence it cites to a history of the therapeutic use of licorice in Europe: people have used licorice, "mainly the species Glycyrrhiza glabra L.", as a remedy since the beginning of recorded history. The same account adds that "the Chinese and their Far Eastern neighbours have traditionally used liquorice most extensively" (EMA/HMPC 2026). None of this is a measure of root quality, which section 8 takes up. Glycyrrhizic acid is also called glycyrrhizin, the term used here.

This review covers the taxonomy, morphology, reproduction, geographic range and ecology of the genus, and the state of its wild resources. It gives particular attention to Uzbekistan, for two reasons. The country lies in the native range of G. glabra, with natural stands along the Amu Darya in Karakalpakstan and Khorezm and along the Syr Darya (Khaitov et al. 2021, cited by Khaitov et al. 2022). It is also a major exporter of licorice extract: among countries reporting to UN Comtrade for 2024 it declared the largest exports of extract by value, USD 39.0 million for 8,656 tonnes, with Iran and the United Arab Emirates yet to report and Turkmenistan not reporting at all (UN Comtrade 2026). The figure covers extract only and a single year; one recent review calls China the world's largest consumer and exporter of licorice overall (Wu et al. 2025).

This review draws on one regional flora (Flora of China), the Kew, USDA, IPNI and GBIF databases, peer-reviewed studies, official documents, an NGO trade assessment and UN trade statistics. Floras of Uzbekistan and of Central Asia were not consulted. Figures taken from review articles are attributed to those reviews. Where the consulted sources give no data, this is noted; "not found" refers to these sources, not to the literature as a whole.

Of the 40 references, 14 were consulted as abstracts only, two in part and one not at all; each is marked in the reference list. The abstract-only group includes all sources on the hydrology and climate of Khorezm and all primary sources on root chemistry.

2. Taxonomy and nomenclature

Glycyrrhiza is a small genus of the legume family (Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae), and its type species is G. glabra L., described by Linnaeus in 1753 (IPNI 2026). Current treatments recognise between 13 and about 29 species; Kew's World Checklist of Vascular Plants accepted 16 in 2026 (Govaerts 2026). The differences appear to reflect how broadly each author defines the medicinal species and their Central Asian and Chinese segregates.

Earlier specialist counts ranged from 13 to 36 (Duan et al. 2020). This article keeps the three medicinal species separate, as the pharmacopoeias do.

Position in the family. USDA GRIN-Global places the genus in tribe Galegeae, subtribe Glycyrrhizinae (USDA 2025). A whole-plastome phylogeny instead recovers Glycyrrhiza as sister to tribe Wisterieae and finds Galegeae non-monophyletic (Duan et al. 2020). The same study resolves four clades and dates the crown of the genus, in its broad sense, to about 37 million years ago.

The medicinal species. Nearly all medicinal licorices fall in one young clade; a plastid-based estimate puts the splits within it at about 0.93 million years ago (Duan et al. 2020). G. glabra, G. uralensis and G. inflata are the source plants of the European, Chinese and Korean pharmacopoeias (EMA/HMPC 2026; Wu et al. 2025). All three are diploid with 2n = 16 (Bao & Larsen 2010).

A chromosome-scale genome assembly exists for G. uralensis: eight chromosome-length sequences totalling 429 million base pairs (Rai et al. 2022).

Hybrids. The medicinal species cross where their ranges meet. In south-eastern Kazakhstan, plants of intermediate form carried the chloroplast type of either parent and leaf compounds of both (Hayashi et al. 2003a). Genomic work has identified three hybrid groups that act as genetic bridges between G. uralensis and G. glabra (Kim et al. 2025), and a survey of 345 plants from hybrid zones found that morphology alone cannot establish parentage (Luo et al. 2025).

Identification. The roots of the three species look alike under the microscope, so species are told apart with DNA markers (Wu et al. 2025). The nuclear ITS region with the plastid spacer trnH-psbA separates the three species (Kondo et al. 2007a), and the plastid gene ndhA helps to identify the parents of hybrids (Luo et al. 2025). Plastids are reported to be inherited from the pollen parent in Glycyrrhiza, so a plastid marker traces only the paternal line (Luo et al. 2025).

Varieties. Flora of China treats the old varieties of G. glabra, var. glandulifera and var. violacea, as synonyms of the species (Bao & Larsen 2010). GRIN still lists var. glandulifera (USDA 2025).

One inference follows. A species name on traded root should be more dependable where only one of the medicinal species is documented in the area of origin and no contact zone has been described nearby. It is least dependable where the species grow together, as in south-eastern Kazakhstan and Xinjiang. This is an inference, not a tested rule; section 7 applies it to Uzbekistan.

3. Morphology

The medicinal licorices are erect perennial herbs 0.3–1.5 m tall with a woody base, pinnate gland-dotted leaves, small pea flowers and a pod whose shape is the main field character (Bao & Larsen 2010).

Flora of China describes the genus as subshrubs or perennial herbs with "roots and rhizomes very developed", erect much-branched stems and odd-pinnate leaves of 3 to 17 leaflets. The flowers stand in axillary racemes, and the corolla is white, yellow, purple or purple-red.

Source: Bao & Larsen (2010).

The pod separates the species: curved into a sickle or ring in G. uralensis, flat and oblong in G. glabra, short and swollen in G. inflata. Field records from Kazakhstan are broadly consistent, describing the pods of G. glabra as "straight or slightly curved, and bare or with sparse glandular spines" (Gemedzhieva et al. 2021). Transitional forms still blur the limits between species (Wu et al. 2025).

Underground organs. Licorice has a root system and horizontal underground stems. The pharmacopoeia calls these stems stolons and the floras call them rhizomes; this article uses "rhizome" except where it follows a source. The commercial drug is the root together with these stems (EMA/HMPC 2026).

In Kazakhstan the harvested roots and rhizomes are 5 to 50 mm or more thick, and only healthy light-yellow roots are selected (Gemedzhieva et al. 2021). The yellow colour comes from flavonoids (EMA/HMPC 2026).

Roots penetrated to 3.5–4 m in trials in Uzbekistan (Gafurova & Juliev 2021, cited by Khaitov et al. 2022). A depth of 17 m is sometimes quoted, but the review that repeats it gives no measurement, and the figure is not used here. Root anatomy, the life span of individual plants and measured rhizome lengths were not covered by the sources consulted.

4. Life cycle and reproduction

Licorice stands persist and spread mainly through their rhizomes, while the seed carries a hard, water-tight coat that delays germination.

Phenology. In China G. glabra flowers in May–June and fruits in July–September. G. uralensis flowers in June–August and G. inflata in May–July, and both fruit into October (Bao & Larsen 2010). No phenological record specific to Uzbekistan was found.

Seed. The hard seed coat imposes physical dormancy (Lu et al. 2013, cited by Khaitov et al. 2022). Scarification breaks it: 98% sulfuric acid for one hour gave about 95% germination in work summarised by Khaitov et al. (2022), and mechanical abrasion also works.

Clonal growth. A dug stand regrows from the rhizomes left in the soil. Kazakh harvesting guidance leaves a quarter of the rhizomes in the ground, and stands are "usually completely restored" after 6–8 years (Gemedzhieva et al. 2021).

Symbiosis. Licorice forms nitrogen-fixing root nodules. In a survey of 40 sites in central and north-western China, five groups of Mesorhizobium were the true nodule-forming symbionts of G. uralensis and G. glabra (Li et al. 2012). No measurement of nodulation or nitrogen fixation in Central Asian stands was found.

Pollinators, breeding system and plant longevity were not documented in the sources consulted.

5. Global distribution

G. glabra is the western species. Kew lists it as native in more botanical regions than the other two: 35, one of them doubtful, against 21 for G. uralensis and 4 for G. inflata (Govaerts 2026). The regions are of very unequal size, and a single one covers all of north-central China, so the count shows how many units a range crosses and is not a measure of area. G. uralensis is the eastern and northern species, and G. inflata is centred on Xinjiang. All three are recorded in Xinjiang, and G. glabra and G. uralensis are both listed from Kazakhstan east to Mongolia.

The genus as a whole ranges from the Mediterranean to Mongolia and northern China, with outlying species in eastern and southern Australia, North America and southern South America (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2026). Only G. lepidota in North America and G. astragalina in Argentina and Chile are native to the New World (Duan et al. 2020).

Sources: Bao & Larsen (2010); USDA (2025); Govaerts (2026).

G. glabra. USDA GRIN-Global and Kew's WCVP agree on a native range that runs from Italy and the Balkans through the Caucasus and Iran to Central Asia, Mongolia and Xinjiang (USDA 2025; Govaerts 2026). Both list Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as native. The World Health Organization describes the species as "native to central and south-western Asia and the Mediterranean region" (WHO 1999).

The authorities disagree on south-western Europe: WCVP treats Spain, Portugal and France as introductions, while GRIN lists France as native.

G. uralensis. The species runs from Kazakhstan and Russia through Mongolia to northern China (Bao & Larsen 2010). In Kazakhstan it occurs in the centre, south-east and east, while G. glabra occurs in the west, on the Syr Darya floodplain and in parts of the south-east (Gemedzhieva et al. 2021).

G. inflata. The sources disagree on its range outside China. Flora of China lists six other countries, Uzbekistan among them (Bao & Larsen 2010). GRIN lists the same six as native, all on the authority of a 1996 checklist of the legumes of Northern Eurasia that enters the plant under another name (USDA 2025). Kew lists the species only for Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Mongolia and north-central China, its region that includes Gansu (Govaerts 2026). GBIF holds 165 occurrence records: 128 from China, 3 from Mongolia, 1 from Kazakhstan and none from Uzbekistan; the rest carry no usable country (GBIF.org 2026a). Record counts follow collecting effort, so they show where a species has been documented and not where it is absent. On specimen records and Kew's checklist, G. inflata is documented from Xinjiang, adjoining Gansu and Inner Mongolia, and Mongolia, with a single record from Kazakhstan.

Overlap. G. glabra and G. uralensis are both listed for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of Russia, Mongolia and Xinjiang (table above). Hybrids are documented in south-eastern Kazakhstan (Hayashi et al. 2003a), and a genomic study found hybrid groups widely distributed in Central Asia, including Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan (Kim et al. 2025). Flora of China, Kew and GRIN do not list G. uralensis for Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan, although GBIF now holds ten herbarium specimens of it from one province of Uzbekistan (section 7).

Occurrence records. GBIF holds 6,459 records of G. glabra and 2,007 of G. uralensis (GBIF.org 2026a). Totals differ between countries mainly because collecting effort differs: Spain leads the G. glabra list although WCVP regards the species as introduced there. This review therefore uses the counts only to show which species have been documented in a place, not how abundant they are.

Modelled range. A climate-niche model for China puts climatically suitable habitat, which is not the same as occupied range, at roughly 2.7 million km² for G. uralensis, 1.8 million km² for G. glabra and 1.0 million km² for G. inflata (Ma et al. 2025). It projects a loss of about half a million km² for G. uralensis by 2041–2080. The paper has internal inconsistencies, so these areas are best read as orders of magnitude.

6. Ecology

Licorice is a plant of river floodplains, tugai, saline meadows and sandy semi-desert; in Kazakhstan's tugai it is recorded over shallow groundwater. Tugai is the riverside woodland and scrub of Central Asian rivers.

Source: Bao & Larsen (2010).

Habitat. In Kazakhstan G. glabra grows "in steppes, semi-deserts and deserts, on solonetzic soil meadows and in Tugay vegetation with a shallow deposit of groundwater" (Gemedzhieva et al. 2021). Solonetzic soils are sodium-rich and alkaline. Tamarisk (Tamarix spp.) and Halimodendron halodendron are the tugai shrubs named alongside Kazakh licorice stands.

Water. The roots reach groundwater and act as "bio-drainage" (Dagar et al. 2015, cited by Khaitov et al. 2022), and long-term stands lowered saline groundwater in Uzbek trials (Gafurova & Juliev 2021, cited by the same review). If the plant relies on shallow groundwater, a falling water table would be one way in which dams and river regulation reduce licorice stands. The Kazakh assessment names both among the causes of decline (section 9), though no source separates their effect from that of digging. Section 7 gives water-table measurements for Khorezm.

Stress tolerance. The three medicinal species tolerate drought, salt and alkali, cold, heat and blown sand (Ma et al. 2025). In China's modelled range, 62% of the suitable habitat of G. uralensis, 33% of that of G. glabra and 26% of that of G. inflata lies in desert (Ma et al. 2025), figures that carry the caution given in section 5. No measured salt-tolerance threshold or groundwater-depth optimum for licorice was found in the sources consulted.

Climate and soil. A cultivation review gives a working envelope of 5–25 °C mean air temperature and soil pH 5.7–8.2, with sandy soils preferred and heavy clay hindering establishment (Marui et al. 2011 and Çetin et al. 2015, cited by Khaitov et al. 2022). The same review cites annual rainfall of 400–1,160 mm. All of these figures come from cultivation studies. The rainfall range lies above what falls in the desert habitats recorded above, so rain of that order cannot be a requirement of the species. In its dry habitats the plant either manages on much less water or draws on another supply; the Kazakh record names shallow groundwater for tugai stands and does not say what supplies the others.

Effects on soil. Field reports credit licorice with improving saline soil, though the sources do not resolve the mechanism. In the Hungry Steppe (Mirzachul) of Uzbekistan, three years of licorice raised the yields of the wheat and cotton that followed (Kushiev et al. 2021, cited by Khaitov et al. 2022). The original field study appears to be Kushiev et al. (2005), which was not read.

The same review reports total dissolved salts falling from 6.35 to 3.99 g/L over three years under licorice, without naming the site or the medium measured. It also reports water-stable soil aggregates rising by 70–80% under long-term stands (Gafurova & Juliev 2021, cited by Khaitov et al. 2022).

China's State Council classes licorice as a protected wild sand-fixing plant that helps prevent desertification (State Council 2000). About 147,000 ha of licorice have been planted in Chinese deserts, according to figures cited by Ma et al. (2025).

Other roles. The shoots serve as livestock fodder in the Aral Sea region (Khaitov et al. 2022). "Margins of farms" appears in the Flora of China habitat lines of at least three species, two of them in the table above, which fits a plant that persists as a rhizomatous weed of irrigated land. No source that measures its effect as a weed was found.

7. Licorice in Uzbekistan: Khorezm and the lower Amu Darya

Uzbekistan lies inside the native range of G. glabra, and Khorezm is one of the areas named for its natural licorice. Conditions recorded in Khorezm resemble the habitat described for the species elsewhere, though no test of the resemblance in the stands themselves was found.

Where it grows. Natural licorice in Uzbekistan is reported from the deltas of the Amu Darya in Karakalpakstan and Khorezm province, the Syr Darya, and the banks of small rivers in the Fergana Valley, Surkhandarya and Syrdarya provinces (Khaitov et al. 2021, cited by Khaitov et al. 2022). No source that ranks these areas by stock was found.

Which species. G. glabra is the only one of the three medicinal species that Kew lists for Uzbekistan; USDA and Flora of China list it too, together with G. inflata (below) (Govaerts 2026; USDA 2025; Bao & Larsen 2010). Occurrence records confirm G. glabra and add a second species. GBIF holds 347 Uzbek records of G. glabra, 10 of G. uralensis and none of G. inflata (GBIF.org 2026a). All ten G. uralensis records are herbarium specimens collected in 2024–2025 in Kashkadarya, in the south of the country, where G. glabra has been collected too. Just over half of the G. glabra records, 182, come from one collection devoted to that species. As section 5 notes, such counts show which species collectors have documented, not the make-up of the stands, for which no survey was found.

Flora of China lists Uzbekistan for G. inflata and for the slender-rooted G. aspera, but not for G. uralensis (Bao & Larsen 2010). GRIN lists it for G. inflata as well, from the 1996 checklist described in section 5 (USDA 2025). Neither listing of G. inflata could be matched to a specimen in the sources consulted: GBIF holds no record of it from Uzbekistan. Kew does not accept the species for any Central Asian republic, but Kew does not list G. uralensis for Uzbekistan either, although specimens now exist, so a checklist's silence does not settle the point. The regional floras, which could settle it, were not consulted.

In Khorezm. Sixteen of the Uzbek G. glabra records are from Khorezm and 68 from Karakalpakstan. Fourteen of the Khorezm records are herbarium specimens collected in 2024 in Bagat, Khanka and Yangibazar districts, some of them labelled from the Amu Darya itself, and held by the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan. GBIF holds no record of G. uralensis or G. inflata from either region (GBIF.org 2026a). Of the 84 records, 64 belong to the collection devoted to G. glabra and 20 to other collections. The devoted collection shows that the species grows there; it cannot show that the others are absent.

No G. glabra × G. uralensis hybrid zone was found in the literature for Uzbekistan; one is described from south-eastern Kazakhstan (Hayashi et al. 2003a). A genomic study of 29 plants from seven countries placed both of its Uzbek plants, one from the west of the country and one from the east, in G. glabra; its other three G. glabra plants came from China and Kyrgyzstan. On that sample its authors describe G. glabra as "distributed in regions closer to Europe, such as Uzbekistan" and G. uralensis as closer to East Asia, with hybrid groups widely distributed in Central Asia, including Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan (Kim et al. 2025). Two plants cannot rule hybrids out, and no survey designed to detect them in Uzbekistan was found, so this remains an absence of reports, not proof of absence. Both species have been collected in Kashkadarya; the records located do not show whether they grow in the same stands there.

The only chemical field survey of Uzbek licorice that was located studied G. glabra at one habitat, whose location the abstract does not give. Every underground sample contained glabridin, the marker compound of the species (Hayashi et al. 2003b), so the chemistry agrees with the botanical identification of those plants. Section 8 explains why this marker matters.

Section 2 inferred that a species name on traded root should be more dependable where only one medicinal species is documented in the area of origin and no contact zone has been described nearby. Applied to Uzbekistan, the test gives different answers by region. On the records located, the lower Amu Darya meets the first condition and, as far as the sources go, the second. All 84 records from Khorezm and Karakalpakstan (above) are of G. glabra, though 64 of them come from a collection devoted to that species, so the condition is met on specimen records, not on a survey. None of the hybrid zones or hybrid groups in the sources consulted is placed inside Uzbekistan. The one zone the sources describe is in south-eastern Kazakhstan (Hayashi et al. 2003a); hybrid groups are also reported from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia, placed only by country in the text read (Kim et al. 2025). "Nearby" therefore rests on an absence of reports within the country, not on a measured distance. The Flora of China and USDA listings of G. inflata for Uzbekistan name no region, so they neither place that species on the lower Amu Darya nor exclude it. Kashkadarya, where both species have been collected, does not meet the first condition. Origins for which the checklists list G. glabra alone, such as Italy, Türkiye or Iran, pass the first condition at checklist level; the contrast is with south-eastern Kazakhstan, where a contact zone is described, and with Xinjiang, where all three species are recorded. Marker and, where needed, DNA testing therefore remain the check for any given lot (sections 2 and 8).

Site conditions in Khorezm. Khorezm is an irrigated lowland in the inner Aral Sea Basin with an extremely continental climate and very low precipitation (Conrad et al. 2012; Ibrakhimov et al. 2011). It was closely monitored: about 2,000 wells were read from 1990 to 2006 (Ibrakhimov et al. 2011). The table sets the recorded conditions beside the habitat described for G. glabra.

The water table in Khorezm is shallow largely because of irrigation. The 17-year analysis attributes it to topography, soil texture and the irrigation and drainage networks, driven by heavy diversion of river water (Ibrakhimov et al. 2011). On these figures the water table lies within the 3.5–4 m rooting depth reported from Uzbek trials. Licorice here can meet water in two settings: beside the river, and under the irrigated farmland, where water diverted from the same river keeps the groundwater high. Changes in water availability, possibly including shifts of the river channel, are named among the causes of decline along the river (Saribayeva et al. 2025). Under the irrigated oasis, irrigation and drainage hold the water table high (Ibrakhimov et al. 2011); no measurement of whether licorice stands gain or lose from that was found.

Beyond the limits noted in the table, two more apply to this comparison.

• The Khorezm figures were taken from abstracts and cover 1990–2006. How the wells were distributed within the irrigated area, and whether the water table has changed since, was not checked.
• Shallow saline groundwater is a general feature of irrigated dry lowlands in Central Asia (Ibrakhimov et al. 2011). The comparison therefore places Khorezm in a class of settings; it does not single it out.

State of the stands. A study published in 2025 analysed G. glabra populations in the Amu Darya basin, labelled CP1 to CP6, and recorded 0.6–7.2 individuals per m² (Saribayeva et al. 2025). By age structure it classed four populations as old, one as mature and one as transitional. It attributed the species' decline along the river to changing water availability and to the agricultural and economic use of tugai forests. The abstract does not name the sites.

In Karakalpakstan, natural licorice habitat shrank from 38,000 ha in the 1960s to 6,500 ha in 2020 (Tajetdinov 2021, cited by Khaitov et al. 2022). The review that reports the figure attributes the loss to excessive harvesting and gives no data on causes; it does not weigh reduced river flow to the delta or land conversion. The same review says over-exploitation has greatly reduced the plant's distribution area in Uzbekistan as a whole. A 2018 resolution provides for up to 25,000 ha of plantations in Karakalpakstan (section 9). No stock or area estimate for Khorezm was found.

Wild and plantation root. An official account of a 2018 presidential meeting set the aim of moving from simple collection of wild licorice root to organised plantations (Press Service of the President 2018). Root from the region may therefore be wild-dug or plantation-grown. The two should be distinguished in trade. The sources located report less glycyrrhizin in cultivated root: one compared three-year-old plants grown in Japan with wild Tajik plants, the others give no plant age, and none concerns Uzbek plantations (section 8).

Since 2022 the state's "one district, one product" scheme has assigned licorice to every district of Khorezm and of Karakalpakstan (section 9).

8. Root quality: glycyrrhizin and species markers

Reported glycyrrhizin content varies about two-fold within the one Uzbek habitat sampled, nearly four-fold across the wild Tajik collection, and several-fold between the wild Tajik plants and plants raised from their seed and grown for three years in Japan. The published data do not separate the effect of origin from that of plant age, organ, growing site and species.

The standard. The European Pharmacopoeia requires at least 4.0% 18β-glycyrrhizic acid in the dried root (quoted by EMA/HMPC 2026). Published general figures for glycyrrhizin in the root vary widely. The EMA assessment says glycyrrhizin "typically represents 5–10% of the roots" and varies "with plant variety and climatic conditions of growing place", giving a span of 5–25% and citing two papers. The WHO monograph gives 2–9% (WHO 1999). The two field series located for this review, 3.3–6.1% and 2.56–9.29% (table below), lie within the WHO span except at the top of the Tajik range. Against the EMA's "typically 5–10%", the Uzbek samples run from below that band into its lower part, and the Tajik samples from further below it to near its top; none comes near 25%. The general figures and the field figures were obtained in different ways, so these comparisons are indicative only.

Single samples fell on both sides of the 4.0% minimum in the Uzbek series, as they did in the Tajik one. The minimum applies to a lot, that is, one batch of root, so a range of single samples neither passes nor fails it; compliance is decided by assay of the lot. The figures were obtained by the authors' HPLC analysis, which may not be equivalent to the pharmacopoeial assay. The cultivated plants were raised from Tajik seed and grown for three years in Japan, and every one fell below 4.0%. Plantation root is normally lifted in its third or fourth year (section 9), so these plants were not unusually young. They were grown in Japan, however, and no source separates the effect of cultivation from that of site and climate, so the result is not an estimate, high or low, for plantations in Central Asia.

Wild and cultivated root. Wild plants carried more glycyrrhizin than cultivated ones in work summarised by Khaitov et al. (2022, citing Liu & Lin 2012). The material read does not say whether plant age was controlled. Wu et al. (2025) state that "the active ingredients in cultivated licorice are generally fewer and do not meet pharmacopoeia standards".

Species markers. Glabridin marks G. glabra, glycycoumarin marks G. uralensis and licochalcone A marks G. inflata. The rule was reconfirmed in 117 samples whose species was fixed genetically; the exceptions were 6% of the samples, plus hybrids (Kondo et al. 2007b). Uzbek underground samples contained 0.08–0.35% glabridin by dry weight, and Tajik ones 0.09–0.92% (Hayashi et al. 2003b, 2016).

Markers matter because hybrids turn up among licorice samples: in one analytical study, 19 of 95 licorice batches were hybrids (Song et al. 2017). Glabridin in a lot indicates that G. glabra, or a hybrid descended from it, is present; glabridin without glycycoumarin or licochalcone A is the profile expected of unmixed G. glabra. A marker shows parentage, though, and cannot by itself exclude introgression.

Comparisons between origins. The only multi-origin comparison of G. glabra that was found ranked Chinese roots highest in glycyrrhizic acid, followed by Calabrian ones (Montoro et al. 2011). Its abstract gives no figures.

What is not known. Soil water and nutrients substantially affect the yield and quality of G. uralensis (Yan et al. 2023). No primary data were found on how glycyrrhizin in G. glabra responds to plant age, season, soil salinity or water stress. This review can therefore neither support nor reject a claim that a given soil or climate raises glycyrrhizin, for the lower Amu Darya or for any other origin.

9. Resource status, management and cultivation

Wild licorice has declined. The sources name river regulation, ploughing of stands for crops and over-digging among the causes, and the review cited for Karakalpakstan blames excessive harvesting. After industrial demand fell, two monitored areas in southern Kazakhstan more than doubled their stock in 19 years; no comparable monitoring series was found for Karakalpakstan.

Source: Gemedzhieva et al. (2021). The figures are "operational reserves", the term used in the source. The last survey left out West Kazakhstan and is not strictly comparable with the national series: it shows a larger reserve than in 1991 on a smaller area, so the three rows cannot be read as a trend.

Trends. In two monitored areas of southern Kazakhstan the stock fell from 20,600 tonnes in 1970 to 13,400 in 1993, then rose to 33,100 in 2012, after demand dropped and Soviet-era extract factories closed (Gemedzhieva et al. 2021). In Karakalpakstan the area of natural habitat fell from 38,000 ha to 6,500 ha between the 1960s and 2020 (section 7). China's wild reserve declined yearly to 1.04 million tonnes in 2010 (Yan et al. 2023). A share of over 60% of China's wild reserves has been attributed to G. inflata (Wu et al. 2025, citing a 2005 source). That figure describes standing wild stock inside China, where the species is concentrated in Xinjiang; it says nothing about range, or about licorice outside China.

Causes of decline. The Kazakh assessment names desertification, dams and other works that changed river regimes, ploughing of licorice stands for crops, and excessive root harvesting (Gemedzhieva et al. 2021). A dug plot is usually restored in 6–8 years (section 4). In the two monitored areas the stock rose within about two decades after industrial demand fell. It ended above the 1970 figure, which suggests that 1970 was not an undisturbed baseline, so the series is not a clean measure of how fast a dug district recovers.

Conservation status. The IUCN Red List, as served through GBIF, rates G. glabra as Least Concern and holds no assessment of G. uralensis or G. inflata (GBIF.org 2026b). Legal protection is set country by country.

Uzbekistan's acts. The 1995 resolution ordered a survey and special registration of land carrying wild licorice, barred its use for construction or other purposes, and called for strict measures against illegal digging (Cabinet of Ministers 1995). It directed new licorice in Karakalpakstan mainly to saline land unsuitable for cotton and grain. The act was repealed in 2021.

A 2018 resolution approved an association of licorice producers and processors, seated in Nukus, and up to 25,000 ha of plantation land in Karakalpakstan (Cabinet of Ministers 2018). A 2019 act scheduled 5,000 ha a year for 2019–2023 and obliged extract makers in the association to plant at least 100 ha each. It also provided for additional licorice-use quotas, set by the State Committee for Ecology at the association's request with a positive opinion of the Academy of Sciences (Cabinet of Ministers 2019).

A 2020 presidential resolution listed licorice, under the botanical name Glycyrrhiza glabra L., as a recommended medicinal plant for all districts of Karakalpakstan and of Syrdarya and Khorezm regions (President of the Republic of Uzbekistan 2020). The 2022 "one district, one product" scheme assigns licorice to all districts of Karakalpakstan and Khorezm (President of the Republic of Uzbekistan 2022).

Harvest guidance. Kazakh guidance sets a plough depth of 40 cm in floodplains and 60 cm in steppe depressions, an offtake of no more than three-quarters of the roots and rhizomes, and a rest of 6–8 years (Gemedzhieva et al. 2021). One Kazakh operator has held FairWild certification for wild licorice since 2008 (Gemedzhieva et al. 2021).

Cultivation. Plantations are established from scarified seed or from stolon cuttings 15–20 cm long, at about 20,000–24,000 plants per hectare, and lifted in the autumn of the third or fourth year (Marzi et al. 1993, Karkanis et al. 2018 and Mousa et al. 2006, cited by Khaitov et al. 2022). Trial root yields range from about 5 to 20 tonnes per hectare; the best fertiliser treatment in Karakalpakstan gave 12.6 (Tajetdinov 2021, cited by Khaitov et al. 2022). The review does not always state whether yields are fresh or dry weight.

China grows G. uralensis on about 26,900 ha (Yan et al. 2023) and has encouraged cultivation since 2000 (State Council 2000). That area and the 147,000 ha of desert plantings cited in section 6 come from different sources and were not reconciled. The sources located report less glycyrrhizin in cultivated root, but none is known to have controlled plant age or site (section 8).

10. Conclusions

Commercial licorice is the root of three hybridising species whose split a plastid-based estimate puts at under a million years ago. G. glabra is the western one of the three, with a native range that runs from Italy to Mongolia. It is a deep-rooted, clonal, nodulated perennial of floodplains and saline lowlands that tolerates salt and drought; in Kazakhstan's tugai it is recorded over shallow groundwater. Wild stands have declined. The sources name river regulation, ploughing of stands for crops and over-digging among the causes, and the review cited for Karakalpakstan blames excessive harvesting.

Five gaps limit firmer statements about the lower Amu Darya. No stock or area estimate for Khorezm was found. No depth optimum or salt threshold for the species was found. No root assay from a named site in Khorezm was found. No survey of species composition or of hybrids in the stands was found, so their identity rests on checklists and collectors' records. No primary data were found on how glycyrrhizin in G. glabra responds to plant age, season, soil salinity or water stress. A survey of Khorezm stands that measured area, root stock, water table and salinity, with DNA identification and marker and glycyrrhizin assays from the same plots, would close most of these gaps.

The evidence does support the following. Of the three medicinal species, Kew lists only G. glabra for Uzbekistan; Flora of China and USDA also list G. inflata, with no specimen record located, and none of these three sources lists G. uralensis for the country. Of the 357 Uzbek occurrence records of the three species, 347 are G. glabra, 182 of them from one collection devoted to it, and the other ten are G. uralensis specimens collected in Kashkadarya in 2024–2025. All 84 GBIF records of the three from Khorezm and Karakalpakstan are G. glabra, 64 of them from that collection, which confirms the species without testing for the others; both Uzbek plants in the one genomic study located that sampled the country were G. glabra. Conditions recorded in Khorezm's irrigated farmland in 1990–2006, a water table roughly 1–1.5 m down on average and moderately saline groundwater, resemble those in which the species is recorded elsewhere; such conditions are general to the irrigated lowlands of Central Asia, and no comparison made in the stands themselves was found.

The only chemical field survey of Uzbek licorice that was located, published in 2003, studied plants identified as G. glabra at a single habitat. Every underground sample contained glabridin, and glycyrrhizin in single samples ran from 3.3 to 6.1%, on both sides of the 4.0% minimum that applies to a lot. Those figures refer to wild root. None was found for Uzbek plantation root; the sources located report less glycyrrhizin in cultivated than in wild root, though none is known to have controlled plant age or site. The record also shows a shrinking resource: natural habitat in Karakalpakstan is reported to have fallen by more than four-fifths, from 38,000 ha in the 1960s to 6,500 ha in 2020, a loss the reporting review attributes to excessive harvesting without giving data on causes, and a 2025 study classed four of six populations in the Amu Darya basin as old. As to policy, licorice has been the subject of government acts since 1995, the first of which was repealed in 2021; plantations of up to 25,000 ha have been provided for in Karakalpakstan since 2018, and since 2022 licorice has been assigned as a crop to every district of Khorezm and Karakalpakstan.

On the records located, G. glabra is the only one of the three medicinal species documented on the lower Amu Darya. Still to be found or made are measurements of the size of the stock, the species make-up and site conditions of the stands, and the glycyrrhizin content of their root.

References

Works cited at second hand, marked "cited by" in the text, are not listed separately. "Abstract only" marks sources of which only the abstract was used. "Read in part" marks sources of which only part of the full text was used. Web sources were accessed on 5–14 October 2026.

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