An integrated agrobiodiversity framework for sustainable Artemisia annua L. cultivation

Medicinal plants are foundational to global health systems, yet their increasing integration into modern pharmaceutical supply chains has intensified sustainability challenges associated with climate change, biodiversity loss, and market volatility. Artemisia annua L., the sole commercial source of artemisinin—the cornerstone of artemisinin-based combination therapies for malaria—exemplifies these tensions. Despite decades of agronomic and biotechnological research, global artemisinin supply remains unstable, largely due to yield variability, monoculture-driven ecological risks, and socio-economic vulnerabilities faced by smallholder producers. This literature-based review synthesizes advances across agronomy, climate-adaptive breeding, artificial intelligence–enabled precision agriculture, and socio-economic governance to propose an integrated framework for the sustainable expansion of A. annua cultivation. Central to the framework is the repositioning of agrobiodiversity—from a perceived constraint on productivity to a primary mechanism for enhancing ecological resilience, yield stability, and farmer livelihoods. The framework emphasizes biodiversity-centric agronomic practices, multi-latitude phenological adaptation, inclusive intelligent farming systems, and Public–Private–Farmer Partnerships (PPFPs) designed to promote equitable value distribution. While the framework is conceptual in nature, it is grounded in empirical evidence from diverse disciplinary domains. To facilitate translation into practice, a structured roadmap for empirical validation is proposed, outlining multi-location, multi-year field trials integrating agronomic, ecological, and socio-economic metrics. Collectively, this work provides a systems-level blueprint for stabilizing the global artemisinin supply while aligning medicinal plant production with biodiversity conservation, climate resilience, and social equity objectives.