How to Tell Real Wild Black Goji Berries from Fakes and How to Choose the Best Producing Region

Black goji berries have been a hugely popular health product in recent years, containing very high levels of anthocyanins. Among them, the price of wild black goji berries has soared all the way, and many online sellers claim that what they sell is wild black goji berries. Consumers are easily fooled, and many do not even understand the difference between wild black goji berries and artificially cultivated black goji berries. Today I will teach you a few ways to identify wild black goji berries and cultivated black goji berries.

1. The size issue of wild black goji berries

Some merchants hype up the size of black goji berries, advertising large black goji berries as “premium black goji berries” and selling them at high prices. In fact, wild black goji berries grow under extremely harsh environmental conditions, so they are generally rather small. There are indeed a small number of large fruits among them, but they can only be obtained through careful selection, and the quantity is very limited; most large black goji berries are artificially cultivated, because artificial cultivation generally uses chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the black goji plants grow very vigorously, and the fruits they bear are naturally larger than wild ones.

2. Ripeness of wild black goji berries

Wild black goji berries grow on wild wasteland and barren flats. To sell them for money, local people rush to pick them, often starting to pick when only some of the fruits are ripe, harvesting ripe and unripe fruits together, so the degree of ripeness is inconsistent. Of course, too many unripe fruits affects quality, as unripe fruits have low anthocyanin content.

3. Appearance of wild black goji berries

The appearance of wild black goji berries is often worse than that of artificially cultivated ones. Growing and harvesting in the wild easily brings in traces of fine sand and other impurities; wild black goji berries are often harvested destructively, with branches cut off together and dried before the fruits are removed, so a small number of fruits may be split, seriously affecting their appearance. Artificially cultivated black goji berries are managed carefully, the fruits are relatively clean, and growers, reluctant to prune branches in order to ensure next year's yield, have few damaged fruits.?

4. Cultivation and growing regions of wild black goji berries

Black goji berries are distributed in the arid desert regions of the five northwestern provinces, among which the output of Xinjiang, Gansu and Inner Mongolia is even greater than that of Qinghai. Qinghai was the first place to develop and utilize black goji berries, and after long-term wild collection, wild resources are becoming fewer and fewer, and now quite a large scale of artificially cultivated black goji berries has been developed there; while in other northwestern provinces, black goji berry development started relatively late, wild resources are still fairly abundant, and artificially cultivated ones are relatively few. In other words, a considerable portion of Qinghai black goji berries are already artificially cultivated, while black goji berries from other provinces are more likely to be wild.

Goods from southern buyers are without exception said to be produced in Golmud, Qinghai, but in fact some of their goods are purchased from Gansu, Xinjiang or other places. Even in Qinghai, many buyers purchase large quantities of black goji berries from Gansu, Xinjiang and other places every year, and their goods are not necessarily produced in Qinghai either. Qinghai black goji berries have already received the praise they deserve and have a relatively big reputation, while black goji berries from other places (mainly Gansu and Xinjiang) have a smaller reputation and are often passed off as Qinghai black goji berries by illegal traders and unscrupulous merchants. In fact, Gansu and Xinjiang have quite a lot of desert saline-alkali land, and their black goji berry output is also very large, with quality on par with Qinghai black goji berries (very similar to Qinghai black goji berries in both appearance and anthocyanin content)

5. Price of wild black goji berries

Most of those selling black goji berries at high prices online are buyers from the south (Guangdong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Zhejiang, etc.) and from Qinghai, and their prices are much higher than the purchase price in the places of origin. Meanwhile, some merchants who sell at normal prices often attract attacks calling their goods “fakes” and “inferior goods.”

In fact, the quality difference between black goji berries sold at high prices and those sold at normal prices is very small; the biggest difference between the two is profit. As for white thorn fruit being passed off as black goji berries, this is now very rare, because the difference between them is still very great. White thorn fruit is a drupe of the Zygophyllaceae family, while black goji berry is a berry of the Solanaceae family; the difference between them is as great as that between a peach and a tomato. Especially for merchants in the places of origin, their supply is abundant and their purchase price is relatively low, so there is simply no need for them to fake anything.

6. Differences between wild black goji berries and cultivated black goji berries

Wild black goji berries are better than cultivated black goji berries simply because their anthocyanin content is higher, their color releases faster and lasts longer, and also because they are not fertilized and not treated with chemicals. Knowing this, it becomes simple to identify whether they are wild or cultivated.

7. Methods for identifying wild black goji berries

1. Anthocyanin content:

That is, for black goji berries of the same weight soaked in the same volume of water (with the same water temperature, pH and soaking time), the deeper the color, the more anthocyanins there are, and the higher the anthocyanin content, the better the grade.

2. Whether they grow naturally in the wild:

In the wild state, growing conditions are not very favorable, so the fruits are generally not very large; local people compete to pick them, so the ripeness of the fruits is not very consistent, and it is unavoidable that a few unripe fruits are mixed in; growing in wild land, they often carry trace impurities. Artificially cultivated ones have superior growing conditions, with strong seedlings and large fruits; the picking time is easy to control, so the fruits ripen uniformly; and fruits grown under protected cultivation have very clean surfaces.

In other words, a deep black color, fast color release in water, an obvious streaking phenomenon, and anthocyanins dispersing in the cup in a smoke-like manner. Natural wild growth and hand picking are the four main criteria for judging genuine wild black goji berries. The fact that the fruits carry traces of fine sand is essentially an important sign of wild harvesting in the desert.

3. Moisture content of black goji berries:

For normally harvested black goji berries, if they are naturally air-dried and wind-dried, the moisture content is almost zero. Rub a whole black goji berry with your hand and you can see the entire seed broken into pieces, without any color coming off on your hand. This is not the case with the so-called “big and black” goji berries recommended by some buyers, which have a very high moisture content, just like red goji berries, feeling sticky in the hand, and many black goji berries even stick together. This kind of goji berry with a very high moisture content not only harms the interests of consumers, but also is extremely prone to mold and spoilage. In addition, the picking method also directly affects the shape, stem length and particle integrity of black goji berries, thereby affecting the grade.