Ginkgo in Tancheng

Ginkgo in Tancheng

Ginkgo in Tancheng is a geographical indication certification trademark.

　　Tancheng County has a long history of cultivating ginkgo, with suitable geographical conditions. The ginkgo nuts produced here are known for their large size, uniform kernels, strong stickiness, rich sweetness, and high nutritional and medicinal value. The ginkgo leaves produced in the area have high levels of active ingredients and excellent quality, enjoying a good reputation in both domestic and international markets.

　　Ginkgo, commonly known as white fruit, is a deciduous tree often referred to as a "living fossil" and is a rare and unique tree species in China. Every part of the ginkgo tree is valuable. Its dried fruit serves as both a premium food and a precious traditional Chinese medicine, containing starch, crude protein, crude fat, sucrose, reducing sugar, nucleoprotein, crude fiber, minerals, and more. It offers benefits such as warming the lungs, benefiting qi, calming wheezing, reducing phlegm, disinfecting, killing insects, reducing urination, and stopping cloudy urine. It can be made into canned goods, ginkgo essence, pastries, and more. The famous dish "Honey-Glazed Ginkgo," which primarily uses ginkgo as an ingredient, is a highlight of Linyi’s regional cuisine. The outer seed coat of ginkgo contains compounds such as ginkgolic acid and bilobol, while the leaves contain flavonoids. In recent years, they have been used clinically to treat hypertension, coronary heart disease, and angina pectoris, showing significant therapeutic effects. Ginkgo trunks are straight, with high-quality wood that features fine grain, elasticity, and resistance to pests, making it a premium timber. Tancheng County has a long history of ginkgo cultivation and is a nationally renowned hub for ginkgo production, earning the reputation as the "Home of Ginkgo."

　　Tancheng County is world-renowned as the "Home of Ginkgo." It is one of China’s major concentrated ginkgo production areas and also among the earliest regions in the country to cultivate ginkgo. Beside Guanzhu Temple in Xincun Township stands an ancient ginkgo tree that reaches 35 meters in height, with a trunk diameter of over 2 meters and a canopy covering nearly an acre. It is said to have been planted during the Tang Dynasty. In the late 18th century (during the Qing Dynasty’s Qianlong era), the "Tancheng County Annals" listed it as an important specialty under the category of "fruits." Ginkgo trees are widely distributed across the county, with a considerable number of planted trees—there are alone 32,000 trees over a hundred years old. A poet from the Qing Dynasty, during his time in Tancheng, once wrote: “Step outside and see nothing but endless white fruit orchards. Too many to count, surely numbering more than tens of thousands.” In 1999, Tancheng was officially named the "Chinese Home of Ginkgo" by the national government. By 2004, the comprehensive output value of its ginkgo industry reached 660 million yuan.

　　Focusing on six townships along the Yi River and 192 villages, Tancheng County has implemented centralized, contiguous, and large-scale development, forming a ginkgo planting zone spanning nearly 200 square kilometers. Within this concentrated ginkgo planting area, every household plants ginkgo trees, every village establishes a ginkgo garden, and every township has a ginkgo demonstration garden. The county has built four major production bases: a high-quality ginkgo nut production base that employs high-density planting and intercropping techniques, establishing 77,000 mu of premium ginkgo nut production bases through grafting with improved varieties, yielding 2.8 million kilograms of ginkgo nuts annually; a standardized ginkgo production base that strictly adheres to GAP production standards in all aspects—from seed selection, cultivation, irrigation, fertilization, and field management to leaf harvesting, drying, packaging, storage, and transportation—resulting in 18,000 mu of standardized ginkgo leaf-picking gardens and producing 8 million kilograms of high-quality dried green leaves annually; a premium ginkgo sapling cultivation base, focusing on developing ginkgo saplings with trunks over 6 cm in diameter for greening purposes through intercropping; and a ginkgo potted plant cultivation base that has developed 600 mu of ginkgo potted plant gardens, cultivating 260,000 ginkgo potted plants. Additionally, through methods such as planting around homes, urban and rural greening, and farmland shelterbelt networks, ginkgo trees have been extensively planted in urban and rural areas. By 2005, the county’s ginkgo greening area reached 200,000 mu, including 149,000 mu of forested plots, with a total of 8.6 million planted ginkgo trees and 200 million ginkgo saplings of various specifications.

　　By 2010, the county’s ginkgo greening coverage had expanded to 260,000 mu, with an annual production of 3 million kilograms of ginkgo nuts, 1,000 kilograms of dried ginkgo leaves, and the establishment of five specialized markets for ginkgo nuts, leaves, saplings, potted plants, and related products. More than 10 series of over 100 processed ginkgo products—including ginkgo leaf tea, ginkgo beverages, and ginkgo foods—were developed and produced. The annual comprehensive output value of the ginkgo industry reached 4.5 billion yuan, with annual export earnings exceeding 1 million US dollars. The planting area spanned 200 square kilometers, and farmers in the concentrated planting zones earned an average annual income of 1,600 yuan per person from ginkgo-related activities alone.

　　On July 28, 2009, after review by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce of China, the geographical indication trademark "Tancheng Ginkgo" was approved for registration. The trademark features the design "Tancheng Ginkgo TANCHENGYINXING and graphic," and the applicant for registration was the Tancheng Ginkgo Industry Development Center.