County in NW China's Shaanxi cultivates thriving winter jujube industry

A screen of a smart visual recognition system shows data on winter jujubes in Dali county, Weinan, northwest China's Shaanxi Province. (People's Daily Online/Li Yuwei)

Dali county in Weinan, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, has developed a thriving winter jujube industry chain with an output value exceeding 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion). Dali winter jujube is a national geographical indication product.

At a company's processing plant in Anren town, AI-powered sorting lines screen the fruit using a smart visual recognition system and infrared spectroscopy, checking color, size and sugar content to weed out substandard jujubes.

"The system can now sort 5 tonnes of fresh fruit an hour," said Cai Jiabing, head of the company.

Dali county now has more than 30 initial sorting lines, 16 deep-processing enterprises and five specialized deep-processing production lines for winter jujubes.

Zhou Aiying checks the ripeness of winter jujubes in Dali county, Weinan, northwest China's Shaanxi Province. (People's Daily Online/Li Yuwei)

Growers like Hao Yanhong are busy harvesting. "This year my family planted 10 mu (0.67 hectares) of winter jujubes," Hao said. "Prices have been decent, at 12 to 14 yuan per kilogram, so the 10 mu should bring in about 200,000 yuan this year."

Such stories are common in Dali. The county now grows winter jujubes on 420,200 mu of land. Last year, output exceeded 770,000 tonnes and the industry chain's output value surpassed 10.2 billion yuan.

The sector spans 12 towns and 203 villages, supporting more than 300,000 jobs and benefiting 100,000 households.

"It's a technology-intensive industry in Dali," said Zhou Aiying, deputy director of the county's jujube industry development center, who has studied jujube cultivation for 26 years. Greenhouses, dormancy-breaking techniques, irrigation controls and other agricultural technologies now allow winter jujubes to ripen in summer, rather than only in October as before.

Photo shows greenhouses of a winter jujube industrial park in Dali county, Weinan, northwest China's Shaanxi Province. (People's Daily Online/Li Yuwei)

"Beyond fresh fruit, we've also turned winter jujubes into preserved snacks, wine, enzyme drinks and jujube paste," said Wang Ping, deputy director of the county's fruit industry development center.