Dragon fruit prices crash, seeking a way out: Jiang Yilu and his wife bury themselves in breeding, hoping new lines will replace the old market

With bananas and pineapples successively reported to have crashed in price, outsiders speculate that dragon fruit, now in season, will be the next "victim." In recent years dragon fruit prices were good, and many farmers rushed to plant it, keeping prices under constant threat of collapse. "If you don't run your own customer base, I wouldn't recommend planting it." That is the advice of Jiang Yilu and Lin Mengzi, a husband-and-wife team who have long studied dragon fruit.

Both Jiang Yilu and Lin Mengzi once studied in the doctoral program of the Department of Horticulture at National Taiwan University, and more than four years ago they returned to Neimen, Kaohsiung, China to actually grow dragon fruit, applying their past academic knowledge to field cultivation. Being on the front line of planting, they are all the more aware of farmers rushing to plant. "The vast majority of farmers enter as soon as they see dragon fruit making money, but the market expectation is clearly that prices are heading downward."

Having foreseen the crisis of a price collapse, the two advised farmers around them not to plant dragon fruit, but were instead questioned as profiting for their own dragon fruit, and were even mocked. "When we first started saying not to plant, it was the most pitiful time, because dragon fruit prices hadn't collapsed yet. We talked about it for two years and farmers scolded us for two years. Every time we went to drink tea we got ridiculed."

The couple work in great harmony, carrying out breeding to create a new market for dragon fruit

Observing the two's actual operation park, because of the heavy rain a while ago, the park was still somewhat muddy. Jiang Yilu said that if days of heavy rain cause flooding in the field, the branches easily rot, which may further produce disease, "so when the field area is first designed, drainage must be done well."

And the interview had just mentioned that orchards must value cleanliness, but upon actually arriving at the orchard there were still some branch residues not cleaned up, and Jiang Yilu joked, "So every time we come down to walk the field ourselves, the two of us argue." Although they "argue," in their conversation the two are extremely in tune, playing off each other and filling in the key points the other missed.

One buries himself in the field planting, one stands in the lecture hall teaching, each in their proper place yet inseparable. Lin Mengzi knows his passion for teaching; when she talks about school matters, she speaks clearly as if she were the person involved; Jiang Yilu understands her rural life, and never omits any situation in the park.

The two have joined hands studying dragon fruit all along, and have also watched the dragon fruit industry evolve all along, from the initially poorer lines to the improved Dahong and Fugui Hong with good flavor, sugar content and quality. Facing farmers entering one after another to rush-plant, and a chaotic market, Jiang Yilu believes, "To break out of the dragon fruit market, we must rely on new lines, which perhaps can slowly replace the current cultivated area and create a new market." At present the two are continuously carrying out breeding work, including yellow dragon and bicolor dragon fruit, and although there are not yet clear results, they are still planting seeds for the future new dragon fruit market.