South China’s Hainan launches innovative agricultural products

By tapping the potential of local cash crops, south China’s Hainan province has launched a wide range of innovative products with high added value, such as pepper perfumes and socks made from fibers of pineapple leaves.

Photo shows new chocolate products developed by the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agriculture Sciences. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

For the past decade and more, a research team from the Spice and Beverage Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agriculture Sciences (CATAS) has introduced over 140 kinds of products in 12 categories, including coffee, vanilla tea, chocolates, household chemicals, and snacks made from tropical crops, according to Wang Hairu, deputy marketing manager of Hainan Xingke Tropical Crop Engineering Technology Co., Ltd., a company affiliated to SBRI.

Photo shows socks made from fibers of pineapple leaves. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

By applying China’s latest technologies while improving and upgrading the traditional ways of processing white pepper and black pepper, the research team has developed more varieties of pepper products, such as freeze-dried green pepper and pepper with more colors, increasing the crop’s added value by over five times, according to Wang.

Photo shows a bottle of pepper perfume. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

The research has also come up with another bold yet imaginative brainchild - a type of perfume made with pepper, which was traditionally used in cooking. To make the perfume, the team extracted pepper essential oil and a variety of aromatic ingredients from the primarily processed pepper products, followed by other processing procedures.

Characterized by a fresh and subtle aroma, the perfume is proving popular with consumers. “It is now available on several e-commerce platforms with many regular customers,” introduced Wang.

Photo shows flower-shaped chocolate products developed by the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agriculture Sciences. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

Photo shows vanilla perfumes. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

By using systematic breeding and artificial hybridization techniques, SBRI researchers also cultivated a new species of cocoa, China’s first cocoa species with independent intellectual property rights. With its special flavor and high quality, it is very popular in the high-end global chocolate industry. Cocoa beans of Hainan origin were exported to the European Union for the first time in 2020. In addition, SBRI has introduced various chocolate products made from the new cocoa species.