A Chungnam National University research team has developed a technology that more than triples the yield of a key antimalarial compound in sweet wormwood. The university said Thursday that the team has developed a highly efficient cultivation strategy to enhance the growth of sweet wormwood and increase its yield of artemisinin, a key ingredient in antimalarial drugs. The team was led by Park Jong-seok, a professor in the Department of Bio-AI Convergence and the Department of Horticulture Science. The method involves treating sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) seedlings with ozonated water for just 40 seconds before transplanting. The findings were published earlier this month in Industrial Crops and Products, an international journal covering research on crops of industrial interest, under the title “Pre-transplant ozonated water soaking boosts growth and artemisinin yield in hydroponic Artemisia annua via hormesis.” Kim Sun-woo, a doctoral student in the Department of Bio-AI Convergence, was the first author, while Park was the corresponding author. “We confirmed that a single 40-sec