With the arrival of Lixia, all kinds of fruits have rushed to the market, and recently, there is a kind of fruit that has rushed to the hot search - lychee, but this time it is not because of the price reduction and "lychee freedom", on the contrary, because of the "lychee freedom" that was barely realized last year, it may be gone this year!
Lychee, price increase!
Specifically, this year's lychee is not a star and a half more expensive than last year: compared with the same period in previous years, the price of lychee this year is indeed higher, which makes people a little "prohibitive". According to China Business Daily, on the morning of May 6, the price of new lychees at a stall in Beijing's Xinfadi wholesale market was 60 yuan/kg, which was much more expensive than the same period in previous years.
What about the terminal? Checking online fruit malls and visiting offline supermarkets in Beijing found that the price of 1 kilogram of lychee ranged from 60 yuan to 80 yuan. From the perspective of lychee varieties, the price of white sugar poppy is more expensive than that of concubine smile.
According to the Xiaoxiang Morning News, on social media, some netizens posted pictures showing that it cost 15 yuan to buy ten concubine laughing lychees. There are also pictures showing that lychee is 61 yuan per kilogram, which is 30 yuan per catty. On May 10, "lychees were sold for 70 yuan a catty" also appeared on the hot search!
However, in the past few days, the price of lychees seems to have rebounded: according to the author's search for the price of a fresh food platform in Shanghai on May 14, the prices of "Concubine Smile" and "White Sugar Poppy" were 19.9 yuan and 29.9 yuan per 450g respectively, while "Concubine Smile" was labeled as "price reduction of more than 30%".
Image source: Screenshot of a fresh food platform
The price may be more convincing according to the "05/06-05/12 Lychee Price Weekly Report" released by the Lychee Longan Industry Resource Platform, compared with the price of the same listing node last year, except for Feizixiao, the rest of the varieties have decreased. In terms of the market price of the land, compared with the price of the same listing node last year, the purchase price of Concubine Zixiao has increased.
Specifically, compared with last week's price, the price of the concubine's smile fell by 55.62%; In March, the head price of red land fell by 46.89%; The head price of white sugar poppy fell by 58.29%. Compared with the price of the same listing node last year, the head price of Concubine Xiaodi increased by 7.41%, and the purchase price increased by 15.79%; The purchase price of March red decreased by 32.71%; The head price of white sugar poppy fell by 3.83%.
Price summary table of lychee varieties (05.06~05.12)
Image source: Litchi Longan Industry Resource Platform
Having said all this, is lychee expensive or cheap this year? It's still the same old saying: the Internet has a memory, and in 2023, the voice of "Lychee Freedom" is still overwhelming all over the Internet. According to public information, after the concubine laughing lychee is listed in large quantities in 2023, the price can reach about 4.5 yuan per catty when it is low. This is about 10 times different from the current one.
A year has passed, why has the price of lychees risen from "concubine laughing" to "concubine crying"? In fact, after careful study, long before the large-scale listing of lychees, there were already rational voices that gave a "preventive shot" for the possible price increase of lychees this year!
Why did lychees rise unexpectedly this year?
According to relevant information, generally lychee early-maturing varieties begin in mid-to-late November, and many people's favorite medium-to-late maturing varieties such as cinnamon and glutinous rice balls begin to enter the flower bud differentiation period from December to January, flowering in February ~ April, fruit development in May ~ June, and maturity and harvest in June ~ July.
According to public information, there are currently 7 major lychee producing areas in the country, namely Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Fujian, Yunnan, Sichuan, and Taiwan. Among them, Guangdong has the largest lychee production, and there is a saying that "the world's lychees look at China, and China's lychees look at Guangdong". Guangdong's lychee production accounts for nearly sixty percent of the national output, and 90% of the counties and districts in Guangdong Province are lychee producing areas, among which Maoming, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Huizhou, Yangjiang, Zhanjiang and other places are the most.
In other words, if Guangdong sneezes, the lychee market across the country will catch a cold! It's a pity that from last year to this year, Guangdong's climate is not only "unfriendly" to lychees, it is simply a hell of "hot + deep"!
First of all, let's look at the "hot": according to Shantou Daily and others, due to the high temperature in South China last winter, lychee fruit trees could not obtain sufficient dormancy period, and could not accumulate nutrients well for flower bud differentiation. In the spring of this year, another wave of severe "inverted spring cold" ushered in, which once again seriously affected the growth and development of lychees. Good guys, this is simply a remake of "Ice and Fire"!
How serious is this wave of "inverted spring cold"? According to China Weather Network, in late January this year, the mainland suffered a strong cold wave that affected 25 provinces, which directly led to the continued low average temperature in Guangdong and Guangxi in late January, and some areas were more than 4 °C lower, and these two provinces are the first and second provinces in the mainland lychee production.
Bad weather naturally affects the fruit setting rate of lychees. According to the Yangcheng Evening News, in March 2024, many lychee trees saw only leaves and no flowers. In an orchard in Dongguan, the flowering rate of cinnamon flavor, glutinous rice balls and lychees is less than one percent.
Then the story, you must still remember vividly, in April this year, the key node of lychee growth, many places in Guangdong experienced a rare strong convective weather attack!
According to the China Weather Network, the cumulative precipitation in the central and eastern parts of Guangdong is generally more than 600 mm, and the central and northern parts are more than 800 mm, which is generally more than 2~3 times more than the same period in normal years, and the cumulative rainfall in 41 districts and counties in Guangdong broke the extreme value in April.
Continuous heavy rainfall + frequent strong convection, the "combination" of bad weather just coincided with the critical period of lychee flowering and fruit development, and such extreme weather had a great impact on the growth of lychee, resulting in less flowering, fruit dropping, branch breakage and other serious impacts. Especially in the lychee-producing areas of Guangzhou, Huizhou and other areas in Guangdong, which are seriously affected by heavy rainfall, the impact is even greater.
However, even in Guangdong Province, there are some places that are less affected by the heavy rains: Maoming, Zhanjiang and Yangjiang in western Guangdong have been significantly less affected by the rains in April, while the Leizhou Peninsula is even in drought! Maoming is the largest lychee producing area in Guangdong Province, with an average of 1 out of every 4 lychees in China coming from Maoming City, Guangdong Province. Compared with other major lychee producing areas, the overall situation of lychee production in Maoming this year is still good.
In addition, in addition to climatic factors, the natural law of "big and small years" of fruit trees cannot be ignored: 2023 is a "medium to large year" for lychee production, and a large number of lychee trees bloom and bear fruit, which not only increases the yield and lowers the price, but also makes the lychee tree body consume too much, which will also lead to a low flowering rate of lychee this year to a certain extent.
According to the forecast of the National Lychee Longan Industry Technology R&D Center, the total output of lychee in the country this year is expected to be 1.78 million tons, a decrease of 45.94% compared with last year. Among them, Guangdong, as the largest lychee producing area in the mainland, is expected to produce 876,400 tons in 2024, a decrease of 51.22% from 2023. Guangxi is the second largest lychee producing area in the country, with a lychee output of 416,100 tons this year, which is expected to decrease by nearly 60% compared with last year.
Of course, there are also areas that increase production: Sichuan is an extra-late ripening lychee producing area, with a production period from early July to mid-August, and it is expected that this year's lychee output will be 64,300 tons, an increase of 96% over last year. The lychee production period in Yunnan is from early April to late August, and it is expected that the output of lychee this year will be 78,300 tons, an increase of more than 20% over last year. However, compared with Liangguang, it is almost negligible!
Of course, the reduction in lychee production is also divided into types: according to Shenzhen Satellite TV, the early-maturing lychee variety Feizixiao is not much different from last year's output, and this year's output of many late-maturing lychee varieties has been greatly reduced, and the output of three kinds of lychees, such as cinnamon, glutinous rice balls, and Xianjinfeng, may only be one or two percent of last year, especially cinnamon-flavored lychees, which are basically out of harvest in southern Guangdong.
Guangdong has drastically reduced production, but what about Hainan? According to the "Hainan Release", the decrease in Hainan lychee this year is small, but there is still a reduction in production!
Specifically, compared with other producing areas, the total output of the whole island is estimated to be about 190,000 tons, and the output is reduced by about 20%, among which the yield of varieties such as "White Sugar Poppy", "Ziniangxi" and "Seedless Li" has decreased more, and the yield fluctuation of the main cultivar "Feizixiao" is relatively small.
The reason why Hainan was able to "escape" is mainly because the impact of the cold wave is not so great, and at the same time, it has escaped the rounds of heavy rainfall in April. According to the Nanhai Net, the planting area of litchi in Hainan is about 340,000 mu, with an annual output of about 200,000 tons.
However, overall, this year's lychee production reduction is a foregone conclusion. In response to this "cruel reality", Guo Jianing, the host of CCTV's agriculture, agriculture and agriculture, posted a long article summarizing this on April 30, concluding that I am afraid that it will be difficult to achieve "lychee freedom" this year!
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Image source: Guo Jianing Weibo
Lychee, can also hibernate?
As we all know, lychee is a very seasonal fruit, so the question is, is it possible to eat fresh lychee all year round like watermelon? This requires the power of technology!
Frozen Sleep Lychee is an ultra-low temperature preservation and freeze-sleep technology researched to solve the problem of lychee preservation. According to a number of media reports such as CCTV, in order to solve the problem of lychee preservation, the team of Cao Yong, a professor at the College of Food Science of South China Agricultural University, successfully conquered the lychee liquid nitrogen cold and fresh technology after 5 years of research and launched the frozen sleeping lychee.
So how is the degree of restoration of lychee after "frozen sleep"? At present, the Processing Institute of Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences has successfully broken through the ultra-low temperature freeze-sleep locking technology, which solves the bottleneck problem of difficult color protection and rapid quality deterioration of traditional frozen lychees. The deputy director of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Science and Technology said that around June last year, Guangdong preserved two to three hundred tons of freshly picked lychees using ultra-low temperature freeze-sleep locking technology, which were successively put on the market this year.
According to CCTV, the frozen lychee products produced last year have been retailed on some major e-commerce platforms, and on some platforms, 400 grams of lychee are priced at more than 80 yuan. This year, the technical force is expected to keep more than 2,000 tons of fresh lychees. The author consulted a fresh food platform in Shanghai, and I can really find related products, priced at 69.9 yuan/400g.
Image source: A fresh food platform
2,000 tonnes is a drop in the bucket compared to the total output of millions of tonnes of lychees, but it is a microcosm of the gradual insertion of high-tech wings in domestic agriculture. I believe that in the future, there will be more seasonal goods to break the barriers of the season!
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