This study was conducted to determine the contents of phenolic compounds and astragalosides in Astragalus membranaceus. Between the phenolic compound groups, flavonoids compounds (51.13%) had higher average concentrations than the phenolic acids groups. Among the 30 phenolic compounds, quercetin (353.11μg g-1) provided the highest concentrations. According to different cultivation year, 3-year-cultivated Astragalus (2612.57μg g-1) showed the highest concentrations of phenolic compounds. According to different harvest days, 6/5 harvesting Astragalus (2615.80μg g-1) showed the highest concentrations of phenolic acids. Comparison between the top and subterranean parts of harvested Astragalus plants cultivated for 2 years, 3 years, and 5 years showed big difference of total phenolic compounds in concentrations. Further, the top part had higher amounts of the total phenolic compounds than the subterranean part among all Astragalus. This tendency was similar to those of the top root and lateral root. The concentration of the phenolic compounds in the top root was higher than that of the lateral root.

In order to evaluate the effect of seed weight on different aspect of safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) seed germination and growth characteristics. Quantity of sinapine leaked from seed was greater as the viability of seeds was dropped by the time elapsed of seed aging model and long storage condition in safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.). The cultivar of safflower was Jin-Sun and the seeds that are separated to three different weights of small, middle, and large were used in this experiment. Large seeds revealed the highest germination percent, coleoptiles fresh weight, coleoptiles dry weight, radicle fresh weight and 1000 seed weights than other seed weight. Seed weight had little effect on yield while seed number exerted a positive influence. Interestingly, yield per plant and its major components, number of capsules and capsule weights, revealed a negligible relationship with oil content.

This study was conducted to determine the contents of astragalosides in Astragalus membranaceus. The total astragaloside content (1701μg g-1) of 2 year-cultivated astragalus was the highest among the variously cultivated astragalus plants. Upon an increase in cultivation time, the average value of the total astragaloside content decreased (from 1650μg g-1 to 645μg g-1). Especially, the content of astragaloside decreased rapidly. Comparison between the top and subterranean parts of harvested astragalus plants showed that as the cultivation time increased, the astragaloside content of the top part decreased. On the other hand, the subterranean part demonstrated the opposite pattern. The astragaloside content of the top root increased compared to that in the lateral root (from 1.9μg g-1 to 33.4μg g-1). Further, the content of astragaloside increased in the top root as the cultivation time increased.