Understand Orchid Medicine (III. Allicin)

Mankind has experienced a long time from primitive civilization to modern civilization. With the continuous progress of science, human beings have achieved very gratifying results in disease prevention and treatment, and all kinds of anti-bacterial drugs emerge in endlessly. As the saying goes, "it is the third part of medicine poison" is true. Modern pharmacy is also constantly exploring new drugs with high efficiency, low toxicity and low side effects, so people think of green bionic drugs.

Far away, I would like to introduce to you a kind of plant we are more familiar with in our daily life-garlic. Garlic is a key substance used to ward off evil spirits in Chinese folklore. Garlic belongs to the family Liliaceae in botany, whose scientific name is Allium sativum L. Like other vegetables, it is rich in vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber. However, unlike other vegetables, it contains 17 amino acids and 33 sulfur-containing organic substances, which are the source of the strong flavor of garlic.

Allicin is a volatile oil extracted from the bulb of garlic, which is a mixture of dienyl trisulfide, diallyl disulfide and methyl allyl disulfide. Trisulfides have strong inhibition and killing effect on pathogenic microorganisms, and disulfides also have certain bacteriostatic and bactericidal effects. Allicin can be extracted directly from fresh garlic, about 3 kg of garlic oil can be extracted from one ton of dried garlic, and now garlic oil with diallyl trisulfide as the main component can be chemically synthesized with a purity of more than 98%. When garlic oil is added to the carrier and diluted to make powder, it can become a certain content of allicin preparation. Allicin is a natural antibacterial substance, basically no accumulation, will not produce residue; allicin generally will not produce drug resistance.

The action mechanism of allicin: the unique molecular structure of allicin makes it have a strong smell of garlic. The germicidal effect of allicin is mainly due to the unique physiological activity of diallyl sulfide. Allyl is a conjugated structure gene, which has high electronegativity and can partially provide electrons to adjacent sulfur atoms, which reduces the electron deficiency of sulfur and increases its activity. Therefore, when allicin is absorbed in the body, it can produce a certain amount of physiologically active sulfur-containing groups, and many sulfur-containing groups are known effective fungicides, which can destroy the physiological processes such as protein synthesis of bacteria.

Allicin is a kind of magical substance which is volatile, smelly, has strong inhibition to fungi and mold, and can keep pests, fungi and bacteria in the soil away from garlic.

The application of allicin in the prevention and control of orchid disease was inadvertently discussed. At that time, there was an article that growing some garlic or spring onions in the orchid garden could inhibit the occurrence of real bacteria, so a few garlic were planted in the orchid garden as an environmental antimicrobial organism, and later a friend recommended allicin to the orchid garden.

At present, most of the allicin used in the market are used for breeding varieties, this variety uses starch as the carrier, accounting for about 85% of allicin. Because of starch as a carrier, allicin should not be directly used in orchid leaf spray, if direct spray on orchid leaves is easy to accumulate starch on the surface of orchid leaves, starch is easy to be contaminated by true bacteria for a long time.

The remote use of allicin is used as an environmental fungicide. Whenever the spring warm or moldy rainy season comes, when the air humidity increases and a large number of real bacteria are produced, after the use of allicin, the whole orchid garden is surrounded by the volatile gas of allicin. After smelling the gas, the real bacteria escape or are killed one after another. this can effectively inhibit and destroy the living environment of true bacteria. In addition, allicin can also be used as a basin spray without spraying to the leaf surface to kill the true bacteria on the plant surface. (Gao Hoi Chung)