Many people have eaten or seen kiwi fruit and kiwifruit in their lives, and they should not be unfamiliar with these two fruits with different names but almost the same shape and appearance, especially in terms of price.
Usually in supermarkets or online stores, Chinese kiwifruit and New Zealand kiwifruit will be set at different prices, such as the price of kiwifruit is about 15 yuan a catty, while the price of kiwifruit reaches about 30 yuan a catty, the difference is more than doubled.
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Seeing this, we can't help but wonder why there is such a clear price difference between these two fruits, which are almost identical in appearance and shape? Are they the same fruit?
Kiwifruit and kiwi life history revealed as we all know, China is an important birthplace of kiwifruit, from a historical point of view, as early as 700 AD ago, China has a written record of "kiwi", later Li Shizhen also commented on kiwi and said: "Its shape is like a pear, its color is like a peach, and macaques like to eat it." From the perspective of resource distribution,
However, the New Zealand kiwifruit we see in the market today is not only very similar to Chinese kiwi in appearance and shape, but also not much different in taste and taste from kiwi, and we may have an idea: could they be the same fruit?
The story can be traced back to the Qing Dynasty in 1904, when Isabel, a female teacher from New Zealand, came to Yichang, Hubei Province to visit her sister, and met Wilson, a botanist who was collecting plant resources in China, and Isabel was very interested in the kiwifruit Wilson collected, so she brought some seeds back to New Zealand after the visit.
These seeds were initially cultivated sporadically on New Zealand farms, and were later valued by New Zealand farmers and breeders as having great food and economic value, so they invested a lot of money in artificial domestication. After decades of hard work, New Zealand has finally successfully domesticated wild kiwifruit into a nutrient-rich, sweet and sour commercial fruit represented by Hayward. In order to maximize the selling price and make huge economic profits, New Zealand growers observed that kiwifruit had similar fine hairs and colors to New Zealand's national bird, kiwi, so they renamed kiwi fruit, Chinese translated as kiwifruit. Zespri Zespri was also established to manage the cultivation and sale of kiwifruit in New Zealand.
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Why are kiwi so expensive?
Since kiwifruit and kiwifruit are the same origin and the same fruit, why is the price difference so big?
First of all, New Zealand began to cultivate and improve kiwifruit in 1904, and large-scale commodity production was formed around 1940, while China was experiencing many factors such as the replacement of old and new society, government changes, years of war and the limitations of the times, and did not begin to pay attention to the kiwifruit industry until 1978. Because Chinese kiwifruit started late and was not as competitive as New Zealand, it failed to dominate the kiwifruit market. Secondly, although kiwifruit and kiwi belong to the same fruit, New Zealand kiwifruit has advantages in quality. The reason is that Zespri Zespri Kiwifruit pays great attention to scientific investment.
Finally, kiwifruit is good at building brand advantages and increasing added value. In order to promote the development of the kiwifruit industry, New Zealand stipulates that all growers must abandon their own brands and collectively form a unified kiwifruit brand: Zespri. All kiwifruit planting, packaging, storage, transportation and distribution are managed under the unified responsibility of Kiwifruit International Marketing New Zealand.
The Chinese kiwi that came after the newcomer
However, although New Zealand's kiwifruit industry is relatively mature, in recent years, New Zealand's kiwifruit is no longer the only one, on the contrary, China's kiwifruit industry has begun to accumulate and catch up, and has created a number of breakthroughs in the world of China's kiwifruit industry. For example, since 1978, Wuhan Botanical Garden has preserved more than 1,400 kiwifruit resources over 45 years, and has cultivated 45 varieties with different characteristics, which has greatly enriched the resources of kiwifruit varieties in the mainland. In addition, varieties such as Golden Peach, Jinyan, Donghong and Zhongqi No. 2, which have been cultivated by mainland scientists for more than ten years, have also been loved by the general public and have become the main cultivars in China.
At the same time, China also relies on abundant kiwifruit resources to vigorously cultivate kiwifruit with different flesh colors, such as the unique red flesh kiwifruit varieties "East Red" and "Red Yang". Cutting the red flesh kiwi horizontally with a knife, we can clearly see that the heart of the fruit is radial red, while the flesh of other parts is green or yellow, which is very rich in color, and the appearance exceeds the previous kiwifruit. And what we are proud of is that
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It is precisely because of the unremitting efforts of Chinese agricultural science and technology workers, China's kiwifruit industry has ushered in a new world, from the previous Chinese farmers can only choose to plant New Zealand cultivated varieties "Hayward", to now a variety of Chinese kiwifruit varieties to choose to plant, this change not only allows farmers to have more planting options, but also allows us as ordinary people to have the opportunity to taste many different characteristics and delicious kiwifruit.
Today, Chinese kiwifruit seems to have planted wings, swaying up to 90,000 li, planting area has accounted for more than 60% of the world, planting output has surpassed New Zealand, accounting for 50.5% of the world, gradually regaining the international kiwifruit discourse power, greatly promoting the development of China's kiwifruit industry.
How to pick kiwi correctly?
With the development of agricultural science and technology in China, there are more and more types of kiwi fruit to choose from, but in the face of the variety of kiwi fruits on the market, how can we choose a delicious and durable kiwi? In fact, the method is very simple, just keep in mind the hardness of one outside, two hairs and three hairs.
Seeing this, I believe that many friends have an understanding of kiwi and kiwifruit, curious friends order these two fruits to taste and compare in person, I believe that domestic kiwifruit is by no means worse than kiwifruit.
Planning production
Author丨Li Ting Member of China Popular Science Writers Association
Review丨Cheng Xuzhen is a researcher at the Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Planning丨Ding Kuan
Responsible editor丨Yinuo