The harvest of the plant is best done in the state of flower budding. The whole plant is harvested and cut into branches which are dried in the sun or in an oven. The drying temperature should not exceed 40 °C. The dry branches are shaken or beaten to separate the leaves from the stem. The leaves are then packed into fabric bags and shipped to further processing. It is important that the temperatures during transportation and storage never get higher than 40 °C, otherwise artemisinin gets volatile and is lost into the air. The leaves should not be crushed before long time storage (1 year). The optimal storage conditions are either 20 °C with 85% relative humidity (RH) or 30 °C with 30–40% RH.