UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., April 14 -- Pennsylvania State University issued the following news release:

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - To meet global demand for American ginseng, the medicinal plant traditionally collected in the forests of Appalachia and traded and used internationally, the plant now is commonly cultivated on forest farms in the U.S. Northeast. But, according to a team of researchers at Penn State and James Madison University, much of the seed for that agroforestry enterprise is coming from field-based, artificial-shade ginseng farms in Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada - and it may be influencing the genetics of naturally occurring ginseng.

To understand where forest farmers are obtaining their planting stock and better assess how human...