The Chengdu Handles Trade Co., Ltd and Russia's largest retail trader Magnit recently signed an agreement for a year-round lemon supply that is worth over 10 million USD. The variety to be exported is a yellow lemon from Anyue, Sichuan, the Youlike.
Anyue is the country's only county devoted to the commercial production of lemons. It is the country's source for organically produced lemons, and an example of quality and safety in export. In production scale and output, Anyue lemons account for over 80% of the domestic market and 10% of the international market. Anyue is hailed as the lemon capital of China.
"We organically combine an increase in quantity and quality," said the director of the Anyue county department for the lemon industry, Tian Zaize. In practical terms, they integrate and spread the transformation of medium- and low yield orchards and the optimization of technology in new, demonstration orchards. In this way they can effectively increase the lemon yield. They adopted a cultivation model with "deep trenches, high ridges, and few trees". Furthermore, pruning is avoided in the first three years of a tree.
In transformed orchards the three-meter spacing between trees is changed to six meters, which solves the problem of trees blocking each other's sunlight. The deep trenches and high ridges solve the problem of irrigation. The natural environment that results from transformation through science improves the growth of lemons day by day. The output per 0.07 hectare goes from 1.500 kilo to 2.500 kilo. The income of farmers also increases. Apart from this, applying fertilizer is also a core value in safeguarding high quality fresh fruit production.
Nowadays, there are two things lemon farmers in Anyue absolutely do not use as means of agricultural production. They do not use pesticides prohibited by national stipulations, and they do not use pesticides limited or prohibited by the Codex Alimentarius of the main export destinations such as the United States, Japan, the European Union, Russia, and Southeast Asia.
At present, the high quality lemons from Chengdu Handles Trade Co., Ltd are not only exported to the Russian market, but also to Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. This company hopes to optimize deployment of natural resources in the expansion of existing, overseas markets. They plan to further expand markets in the Middle East and Europe through the China-Europe Express Railway.
