This year's exports of lychee, China's specialty fruit, from south China's Guangdong Province hadtopped 700 tons by July 2, tripling last year's total, according to the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine.
It is estimated that the lychee yield in Guangdong will total 900,000 tons this year as there is a once in 50 years bumper harvest, in the southern province this season.
Local sources say so far this year 310 tons of lychee have beensold to Japan at a total price of 300,000 US dollars.
Lychees with their white juicy flesh and coral husks, are seldom grown outside China. They have been grown widely in Guangdong Province since the early 1990s as a result of a change in the structure of local agriculture.
So far, lychees from Guangdong Province have been exported to the United States, Canada and Japan as well as the European Union and southeast Asian countries.
Experts say the surge in Guangdong's lychee exports is largely the result of effective local quarantine supervision, which helps lychee planters to meet international standards.
(Xinhua News Agency July 8, 2002)
|