Research on Blockchain-Based Method for Accurate Tracing of Individual Plants of Traditional Chinese Medicine

In recent years, consumers have become increasingly aware of the quality and safety of Chinese herbal medicines. In the process from planting to consumption of Chinese herbal medicines, it is very important to track the source of information on planting, production, storage, transportation and other circulation information. Traceability can make the public believe that Chinese herbal medicines are safe, effective, and of controllable quality, however, how to set up a traceability system that is trustworthy, efficient, and tamper-proof to ensure the quality of Chinese herbal medicines is still a huge challenge. At present, the quality traceability system of Chinese herbal medicines is still not perfect, many “Dao Di herbs” are no longer “Dao Di”, the traceability is distorted by off-site cultivation, and the quality standards and norms of each link are not sound, which leads to problems such as fake and inferior medicines in Chinese herbal medicines that enter the traceability system. In this paper, we propose a method to use blockchain, privacy protection, smart contract, molecular biology, DNA, Internet of Things, high-precision localization and other technologies in the accurate traceability and localization of individual plants of herbal crops, which is a method of anti-counterfeiting and traceability of herbal crops through DNA technology, so as to be able to effectively avoid the problems of substandard crops, misrepresentation of planting years, and counterfeiting of the origin of the herbal crops, and thus effectively avoid the problems of counterfeit medicines, inferior medicines, and so on. It is of great significance to promote the source transparency and quality safety of Chinese herbal medicines in China.