Dr. Petra Illig

Dr. Petra Illig is an aerospace medical physician in Alaska. She graduated from the University of Washington School of Medicine (Seattle) in 1981 and had received extensive training through the WAMI program in Alaska. After an internship at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, she became board certified in Emergency Medicine and spent the next 15 years as an ER doctor in the Pacific Northwest. She was happy to return to Alaska in 2001 to start her aviation medicine practice, where she continues to seeing pilots for FAA medical certification.

As a physician, she was inspired by the stories of traditional healing plants of the North. When she learned about Rhodiola rosea, and the fact that it was being threatened to extinction from overharvesting, she wanted to see if she could grow it in her garden in Anchorage since conditions were similar to Siberia where it grows naturally. Starting with a handful of seeds, she grew over 100,000 seedlings and then recruited a few growers to plant them in their farms. By 2013 they began harvesting high quality, pure, organically grown roots and selling them to botanical companies outside of Alaska. More growers became interested, so Al Poindexter of Anchor Point Greenhouse started producing seedlings for growers. He also built a root processing facility available to any grower. Together they formed Alaska Rhodiola Enterprises, to work with Alaska farmers to bring Alaska Grown Rhodiola rosea to the botanical industry.

Since rhodiola agriculture is so new, there is little published information for growers to follow. Dr. Illig’s home garden initially became ground zero for rhodiola agriculture research, but she soon led a series of USDA research projects to formally investigate various cultivation methods. She works directly with growers and helps them learn from each other’s observations and experiments as well as from her own research. She continues to recruit new growers, as she is confident that they can make good money cultivating this precious northern medicinal plant.


After spending a few years developing various tincture formulations and testing them for potency, she came up with a formulation that has become quite popular, having sold over 100,000 bottles last year. To keep up with demand, Al Poindexter built a scaled-up manufacturing facility at Anchor Point Greenhouse. And because Dr. Illig knows everyone and every step along the way, she is confident in the quality of Alaska Rhodiola products. The positive feedback she gets from her patients and customers gives her the assurance that Alaska Rhodiola tincture is very effective.


Dr. Illig is a western-trained physician, so it took a lot of evidence for her to overcome her negative bias against herbal remedies. The clinical and laboratory information about the health benefits of Rhodiola is very convincing, as has been her own experience with clients and customers. She is passionate about the Alaska Rhodiola farming project and is proud to offer Alaska Rhodiola products made from the finest cultivated Rhodiola rosea in the world.