Where Is Goji Berry a Specialty Product? A Detailed Guide to Ripening and Harvest Months and Varieties

Goji berry is the collective name for commercial goji berries, the plant Ningxia goji (Lycium barbarum), Chinese goji (Lycium chinense), and other species under the genus Lycium. The goji berries people eat daily and use medicinally are mostly the fruit of Ningxia goji, known as “goji berries.” So where is goji berry a specialty product? In which months does it ripen and reach the market? What varieties are there? The details are as follows:

Chinese goji (Lycium chinense) is distributed across Northeast China, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, southern Gansu, and the provinces and regions of Southwest, Central, South, and East China.

Differences among goji berry varieties

Ningxia goji (Lycium barbarum): Its quality leads the rest of the country, making it the representative goji berry, and Ningxia is known as the hometown of goji berries.

Zhongning goji: It is the finest grade among Ningxia goji, with thin skin and thick flesh, a pure, sweet taste, and no bitter or other off flavors.

Yellow-fruited goji (Lycium barbarum var. auranticarpum): It is yellow when nearly ripe and orange-red or orange-yellow when ripe. The ripe fruit of yellow-fruited goji has a pointed, flat, or slightly concave tip, a ridged body, a large tip and a slightly smaller base, thick flesh, and a sweet taste.

Red-branched goji (Lycium ruthenicum var.?: Lycium dasystemum): Produced in Nuomuhong, Qinghai. It differs from Ningxia goji in that the old branches are brownish red and the corolla lobes have no marginal hairs.

Truncate-calyx goji (Lycium truncatum): Produced in Shanxi, northern Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, and Gansu, on mountain slopes, roadsides, or field edges at 800-1500 m elevation. Its berries are oblong or ovate-oblong, 5-8 mm long, with a small pointed tip at the apex. The seeds are orange-yellow, about 2 mm long. Flowering and fruiting period is May-October.

Black goji (Lycium ruthenicum): Distributed in alpine sandy forests, saline sandy land, riverside and lakeside areas, dry riverbeds, and desert riparian forests, it is a desert medicinal plant variety unique to western China. It contains natural anthocyanins with free radical-scavenging and antioxidant functions, and its medicinal and health value is far higher than that of ordinary goji berries.

Xinjiang goji (Lycium dasystemum): Distributed in northern Xinjiang, under cultivation. The berries are ovate or ovate-globose, red when ripe, with a flowering and fruiting period of June to September.

Chinese goji (Lycium chinense): Distributed across Northeast China, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, southern Gansu, and the provinces and regions of Southwest, Central, South, and East China; it is cultivated or has escaped into the wild in Korea, Japan, and Europe. It often grows on mountain slopes, wasteland, hilly land, saline-alkali land, roadsides, and around village homes. In China, besides being widely wild, it is also cultivated in various places for medicinal use, as a vegetable, or for landscaping.

Ningxia goji (Lycium barbarum): It evolved from wild goji berries in northwestern China, and existing cultivated varieties can still grow wild under suitable conditions. The medicinal goji berries of early China were products collected from wild goji in the northwest, and records of medicinal goji already appear in medical texts from the Qin and Han dynasties. Sun Simiao, the famous physician of the early Tang dynasty, wrote in “Supplement to the Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold”: goji berries “from Ganzhou (present-day Zhangye area in Gansu) are the true ones, and those with thick, large leaves are the best.” Shen Kuo, a Northern Song scientist, recorded in “Dream Pool Essays”: “Goji berries growing at the far border of Shaanxi are more than one zhang tall, and are sweet and beautiful, unlike those from other places.”

In which months goji berries ripen and reach the market

Goji fruits ripen intermittently, and in production they are generally divided by ripening period into: spring-fruit goji, summer-fruit goji, and autumn-fruit goji. Fruits that ripen from June to early July, namely the fruit on old-eye branches, are spring-fruit goji; fruits from early July to August that come from that year's spring branches are called summer fruit; fruits that ripen from September to October are autumn fruit. Regarding the component content of summer-fruit and autumn-fruit goji, predecessors have done much research, but there is less research on the component content of spring-fruit goji.