In the sixth year of Kaibao during the reign of Emperor Taizu of Song (973 AD), an imperial decree was issued to Liu Han, the Imperial Physician, the Taoist Ma Zhi, and the nine Imperial Academy medical officials including Zhai Xu, Zhang Su, Wang Congyun, Wu Fugui, Wang Guangyou, Chen Zhaoyu, and An Ziliang, to meticulously collate the Xinxiu Bencao and incorporate the Bencao Shiyi by Chen Cangqi, correct aliases, and enhance the catalog of items. They were also tasked with revising and finalizing the text, totaling twenty volumes with one volume of index, prefaced by an imperial preface, and carved for printing at the Imperial Academy, titled Kaibao Newly Detailed Materia Medica. This was the first published edition of materia medica in our country.

The following year, another decree was issued to Liu Han, Ma Zhi, and others to re-collate the text, adding 134 new drugs to supplement it, and again tasked Lu Duosun, Li Fang, Wang You, and Hu Meng to review and finalize it, publishing it as the Kaibao Revised Materia Medica. The Shennong Benjing drugs were marked in white characters, others in black, and newly added drugs were labeled as "newly attached." The total number of drugs collected amounted to 984.

The preface to the revised edition briefly stated: "By the time of Liang Zhenbai, Master Tao Hongjing had already annotated the Bielu alongside the Benjing, using red and black ink, which was considered clear at the time, and he also examined their functions and provided annotations, compiling them into seven volumes (which should be three volumes), circulated in the southern regions. By the Tang Dynasty, further collation was added, increasing the drugs by over 800 types, and annotations were expanded to twenty-one volumes. The Benjing fistula disease was supplemented; Tao's erroneous statements were corrected. However, after more than four hundred years, the red and black characters no longer matched; old and new annotations were mutually incomplete. Without the sage ruler's governance of great unity and eternal prosperity, how could it be corrected and rectified?! Thus, it was ordered to thoroughly examine the erroneous transmissions and publish a definitive edition. The classifications were not appropriate, hence they were reformed." "Thus, white characters were used for Shennong's sayings; black characters for the transmissions of famous physicians, Tang attachments, and newly attached, each clearly annotated; their explanations detailed, their forms and natures examined, those who corrected errors and distinguished them were noted as current annotators, those who examined texts and recorded them were noted as current reviewers, the meanings were finalized, the principles were detailed and clear, now combining old and new drugs totaling 983 (three should be four) types, along with a twenty-one volume index; widely promulgated throughout the land, to be transmitted and practiced."

Its new annotations are appended below the Tang edition annotations, and are marked with white text as current annotations, current reviews, current details, current verifications, etc. As for the end of the text, if it is a newly added item from the new revision, it is renamed as previously attached in the Tang edition; and the newly added items this time are named as newly attached, with as many as 244 new annotations, its own annotations mainly discussing the origin of the medicinal materials, often refuting Tao's and Su Jing's (new revision) statements; its citations from other books' annotations are mostly from Chen Cangqi's Bencao Shiyi and other edition annotations, occasionally citing Bo Li Hanguang's materia medica phonetic meanings and the Erya texts. The so-called other edition annotations should be various different editions of the Xinxiu Bencao from the manuscript period. (Na Qi)