The standardization of the kiwifruit industry is further advanced

Source: Economic Daily

At Xi'an Yimeiyuan Modern Agriculture Co., Ltd., located in Louguan Town, Zhouzhi County, Xi'an City, the staff sorts kiwifruit through equipment. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Bowen

A few days ago, the 10th China (International) Kiwi Industry Development Conference held in Meixian County, Shaanxi Province, released the Kiwifruit Industry Index for the first time. The index system includes four sub-indexes: kiwi fruit price index, brand influence index, industrial development index and circulation index. The industry believes that this is a key step in the digital development of China's kiwifruit industry, which is conducive to promoting the standardization of the kiwifruit industry.

Kiwifruit originated in China and was later introduced to New Zealand. At present, although China's kiwi fruit occupies an absolute advantage in planting area and total output, there is still a big gap compared with New Zealand in the global market competition. "For a long time, China's kiwifruit industry has faced problems such as low standardization, uneven production management technology, and serious aging of trees. At the same time, some fruit farmers blindly pursue yield, the quality of fruit is quite different, the commodity rate is not high, and the overall quality is not as good as that of New Zealand kiwifruit. Qu Xuenong, director of the Meixian Fruit Industry Technology Extension Service Center, said.

In view of the bottleneck problem of industrial development, Meixian county strengthened cooperation with scientific research institutes such as Northwest A&F University to implement the "four reforms and five upgrades" fruit industry revolution in the kiwifruit industry and comprehensively promote industrial upgrading. With the approval of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the only national-level kiwifruit wholesale market in the country has been built, and 235 kiwi professional cooperatives have been cultivated in recent years, and 4700 cold storage of various types have been built. At the same time, vigorously promote the development of e-commerce, and sell more than 150,000 tons of kiwifruit through e-commerce in 2020, accounting for more than 30% of the county's total output.

With the continuous expansion of kiwifruit cultivation area, industry competition is intensifying. Improving the quality of kiwifruit has become the consensus of the majority of fruit farmers and fruit enterprises. "The kiwifruit industry in Meixian is large-scale, but if the production of farmers is mainly based on one household, the inconsistency of the production process will affect the consistency of fruit quality and quantity." According to Ren Jianjian, chairman of Jinqiao Fruit Industry, in order to solve this problem, the company was committed to the construction of the base in the early stage of its establishment, explored the whole process of orchard custody services, unified production standards, material supply, technical guidance, product sales, and improved the stability of fruit quality. Qi Feng, chairman of Shaanxi Qifeng Fruit Industry, said that in recent years, the company and its 9 subsidiaries have formed a whole industry chain service system, providing small farmers with three hosting modes: full custody, semi-custody and large orchard farm hosting. At the same time, the cooperation model of "leading enterprises + village collective economic organizations" is implemented, and the interest connection mechanism is bound.

"A major bottleneck in the development of China's kiwifruit industry is that at present, it is mainly based on the fresh fruit market, the deep processing market is relatively weak, and the development of deep processing of kiwifruit is the key to improving industrial efficiency." Ma Tianyou, director of the Public Health Training and Science and Technology Service Center of the Medical Department of Xi'an Jiaotong University, believes that kiwi fruit has rich nutritional value and health care effects. It is necessary to strengthen the basic scientific research of kiwifruit, further discover new functional factors of kiwifruit, clarify the mechanism of action, strengthen product research and development and technological innovation, and develop high-quality kiwi functional foods.

Shaanxi accounts for about half of the country's kiwifruit production. Wei Yan'an, director of the Shaanxi Provincial Fruit Industry Center, introduced that while doing excellent fresh fruits, Shaanxi Province has continuously increased the research and development of kiwi fruit machinery and equipment, high-quality pollen and other series of products in the previous production stage, further improved the fruit sorting and storage capacity in the post-finishing stage, increased the supply of ready-to-eat kiwifruit, actively cultivated fruit farmers, accelerated the development of kiwi e-commerce, and promoted the upgrading of deep-processed products such as dried kiwifruit and fruit wine, and continuously promoted the high-quality development of the entire kiwi industry chain.

Qiao Bin, executive vice president of the China Agricultural Products Market Association, said that it is necessary to take the release of the kiwifruit industry index as an opportunity to accelerate the transformation of the development mode from quantitative growth to qualitative improvement, and achieve two-way stability in production and consumption. The main kiwifruit producing areas should not only give full play to the advantages of ecological origin and the leading role of regional public brands, vigorously promote agricultural standardization, and continue to exert efforts in improving product quality; they should also adhere to the market demand-oriented, continue to exert efforts in production and marketing docking, promote industrial greening and brand development, and accelerate the construction of kiwifruit standardization leading areas. (Economic Daily reporter Qiao Jinliang)