Source, quality control, cold chain transportation, more and more imported fruits have achieved "localization"
Domestic fruit upgrade: from high-end to "close to the people"
Reporter Wu Duosi and correspondent Ma Annie
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In recent years, with the continuous expansion of domestic planting scale, domestic fruits have been continuously upgraded and the quality has become better and better. With the upgrading of consumption, the production and sales pattern is also quietly changing. Consumers bought high-quality and inexpensive imported domestic varieties of fruits, and also intuitively experienced the improvement of the quality of domestic fruits.
In supermarkets and farmers' markets in major cities in China, products such as sunshine rose green extract, soft seed pomegranate, autumn moon pear, wild persimmon and other products that originally belonged to the imported fruit zone are now also appearing in the domestic fruit area.
"Before it cost more than 100 yuan to buy a bunch of sunshine rose green extracts, now the chain fruit store in front of my house, B-grade sunshine rose green extracts are only 29.9 yuan per kilogram." Ma Chunying, a resident of Qianhe Homeland in Urumqi City, Xinjiang, said.
In recent years, with the continuous expansion of domestic planting scale, more and more imported fruits have achieved "localization". Tianyan inspection data shows that there are currently more than 6 million fruit-related enterprises in the mainland, and with the upgrading of consumption, the production and sales pattern of domestic fruits is also quietly changing.
The source of fruit tends to be domestic
In the modern agricultural science and technology industrial park in Shaya County, Xinjiang, the huge cherries ushered in the first ripe fruits of this year in May, and the flesh was full, the core was small, and the juice was moderately sweet and sour, which was booked by tourists and visitors. Looking at the clusters of fiery red fruits hanging on the tree, some tourists can't help but sigh: "We have also achieved the freedom of fresh cherries." ”
Looking back at the fruit market over the past 10 years, the initial demand for high-quality fruits such as cherries was mainly met by imports. "Chilean cherries, Japanese sunshine rose green extract, Thai golden pillow durian, etc., in the early days when imported fruits entered the market, we rarely bought them, worried that they would not be sold." Looking at the dazzling fruits in front of him, Xu Weiwei, a store owner of the Spring Agricultural Products Center Wholesale Market in Urumqi, said. In 2019, following in his father's footsteps, he placed his own fruit No. 2 store in the "New Taipei Garden Spring" market, and the two generations of the Xu family witnessed the changes in fruit consumption.
From seasonal high-quality fruits to off-season fruits, more and more imported fruits have poured into the Chinese market, filling the gap of high-end products in the Chinese fruit market. While importing fruits occupy the Chinese market, they also quietly affect the Chinese fruit industry.
In order to ensure the freshness of the fruit, imported fruits are often picked under the condition of immaturity, and after a long period of transportation, the taste and quality are greatly reduced. How to overcome this shortcoming? Chinese counterparts have shifted the origin of fruits to the country.
"In the past, Australian citrus occupied the market, but after 2010, the market purchased more citrus from Sichuan, Yunnan, Guangxi and other places on the mainland, which tasted good and was cheap." Xu Weiwei said.
Not only citrus, when dragon fruit first entered the Chinese market, more than 80% came from Vietnam, and after the successful promotion of domestic dragon fruit cultivation, it replaced 60% of Vietnam's imports.
Nowadays, dragon fruit has not only taken root in southern China, but has also been introduced to the western part of the motherland. "Most of the dragon fruit in the market is shipped from the south, and now we can also eat the local red heart dragon fruit." Jin Hongjun, a dragon fruit planter of the 11th Regiment of the First Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, said.
Grow high-quality fruits
Imported fruits take root in the country and bring economic benefits to local growers. However, the good times did not last long, and the traditional concept of "pile and sell" allowed farmers to focus only on yield, but neglect quality. Therefore, when it comes to high-quality fruits, consumers still prefer "imports".
"Whether it's a head or a color, you can tell the difference between a dozen yuan of cherries and imported cherries (that is, cherries) from the stalls outside, not to mention the taste." Xu Weiwei said.
Consumers' demand for quality has made farmers gradually pay attention to the graded pricing of fruits. However, the transformation of planting concepts, input costs and technologies is inseparable from the support of science and technology.
The first time he tasted "dinosaur eggs" was at Cao Xiaofei's forest fruit nursery, where he was conducting research with hired forest fruit seedling experts. Cao Xiaofei is the person in charge of Xinjiang Aksu Desert True Fruit Industry Co., Ltd., which is mainly engaged in the cultivation of seedlings of Xinjiang's characteristic forest fruits.
According to him, "dinosaur egg" is an imported American fruit apricot plum, which is very crisp in taste and can be stored for a long time. "In recent years, the seedlings of 'dinosaur eggs' have sold very well."
In 2010, the Xinjiang Academy of Forestry introduced a number of apricot and plum varieties to be trialed in Aksu, among which the varieties successfully planted include "dinosaur egg", thick taste, taste emperor, and flavor queen.
In 2018, Liu Huashan, the person in charge of the Suzhong Farm in Jimu County, Xinjiang, moved the experimental field to the field, and in his opinion, the large temperature difference, long sunshine hours and little rainfall in southern Xinjiang have unique advantages in planting American apricot and plum fruit trees. In order to grow high-quality apricot plums, he started from agricultural materials and seedlings according to market acquisition standards, achieved unified standard procurement, improved local saline-alkali soil and regular testing, and formulated a set of standardized operating procedures.
"Our positioning is high-end fruit, the initial investment of standardized orchards is relatively high, if the fruit grown does not meet the market standard, no matter how much fruit is produced, there is not much benefit." Liu Huashan said.
In Shaanxi, Fujian, Shandong, Yunnan and other places where "imported fruits" were planted earlier than Xinjiang, the efforts of new farmers are not only reflected in planting technology and refined orchard management, but they also like product managers to investigate the market, analyze advantages and disadvantages, analyze competitors, and adjust planting varieties. For Yan Hu, president of the Yunnan Binchuan Farmers' Pomegranate Research Association, he is looking forward to replacing the Tunisian soft-seeded pomegranate market in the future after China's new varieties of pomegranates, "Angel Red" and "Huaguang", which have their own intellectual property rights.
Cold chain technology allows fruits to shuttle north and south
In August this year, a train loaded with 32 cold-chain containers loaded with 640 tons of Xinjiang Jiashi Ximei departed from Kashgar Station and arrived at Weicheng Station in Shaanxi Province in three days.
The person in charge of China Railway Urumqi Bureau Group Co., Ltd. told the "Workers' Daily" reporter that the transportation of prunes is using advanced railway cold chain logistics vehicles, the box body is uninterrupted for 24 hours, the whole process of operation is remotely monitored, and the data indicators in the box are updated every 5 minutes, and the mobile intelligent cold storage can maximize the freshness of prunes.
As a typical "imported fruit", prunes quoted from France have taken root in northwest China. Xinjiang Jiashi County accounts for 40% of the country's cultivation area and 60% of the country's output, and has become the largest production, processing and export base of high-quality prunes in China.
As early as 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the mainland launched the construction project of refrigeration and fresh-keeping facilities in agricultural product production areas to accelerate the completion of the shortcomings of "last mile" cold chain logistics facilities in production areas and minimize the loss of fruits after production.
Nowadays, while domestic "imported fruits" are moving to people's tables, they have also formed a new circulation path, subverting the traditional fruit industry.
From the source, quality control to cold chain transportation, qualified quality fruits enter the retail channel according to different grades, for consumers, not only can buy high-quality and cheap domestic imported varieties of fruits, but also greatly reduce the probability of buying "rotten fruits" and "inferior products", and intuitively experience the improvement of the quality of domestic fruits. (Daily Worker)