Lishui Baima Blueberries

Lishui Baima Blueberries

　　Lishui Baima blueberries are a specialty of Baima Town, Lishui District, Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province. The fresh berries feature a powdery bloom on their skin, plump and round fruit, bright color, and a sweet yet slightly tangy taste — an authentic delicacy that delights the palate and is highly favored by many.

　　Blueberries are plants of the genus Vaccinium in the Ericaceae family. Their fruit is juicy and flavorful, with a unique aroma. The blueberry anthocyanins and other compounds they contain offer benefits such as improving eyesight, anti-aging, and cancer prevention. They are hailed as the "functional health berry of the 21st century" and the "queen of fruits," and have been listed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as one of the world's top five health foods.

　　Baima Town in Lishui County is one of the main blueberry-growing regions in Jiangsu Province. In the late 1980s, Baima Town introduced and cultivated blueberries from the Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jiangsu Branch. In recent years, the Nanjing Baima National Agricultural Science and Technology Park in Nanjing, Jiangsu, has engaged in in-depth cooperation with the Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jiangsu Branch, in areas such as the establishment of standardized blueberry bases, breeding new varieties, and production, sales, and processing. This collaboration has significantly accelerated the development of the blueberry industry. Currently, the town’s blueberry cultivation area is nearly 15,000 mu, with 5,000 mu bearing fruit. This year’s yield is expected to reach 3,000 tons, ranking the town at the forefront nationally in both planting scale and output.

　　Baima Town formulated the country’s first provincial-level local standard for blueberries, the "Blueberry Production Technical Operation Procedures." Its blueberry base has been designated as a provincial-level pollution-free standardized demonstration zone. The blueberry-growing areas are mainly selected from sunny sloping hillsides. After soil improvement, the land boasts high organic matter content. The local climate and rainfall are well suited for blueberry growth. Carefully selected high-quality varieties such as Gardenblue, Duke, Bluejay, and Brilliant Blue, combined with 30 years of mature cultivation techniques and management experience, have resulted in the superior quality of Baima Town’s blueberries. The ripe fresh berries have a powdery bloom on their skin, plump and round fruit, bright color, and a sweet yet slightly tangy taste — an authentic delicacy that delights the palate and is highly favored by many.

　　Currently, Baima Town’s blueberry industry has initially formed an integrated industrial development model encompassing seedling cultivation, planting, processing, and sales. The large-scale planting bases and reliable quality assurance of the blueberries have attracted major groups and leading agricultural enterprises such as Tianjin World (Tianjin Ward), Shanghai Baoshengtang, Nanjing Xindeli, and Leqin to establish blueberry food processing operations in Baima Town. Through farmer cooperatives as a link, the "enterprise + cooperative + base" model is implemented, ensuring an integrated production, processing, and sales chain. Products such as frozen berries, juices, jams, and fruit wines are mainly sold to Jiangsu, Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macau.