How can Xinhui mandarin flesh get out of the ditches and turn waste into treasure?

Comprehensive utilization of agricultural products and processing by-products is an important topic in the field of agricultural product processing. At present, China's level of comprehensive utilization of agricultural products and processing by-products remains very low. The extensive use of agricultural by-products, the low-value use of processing by-products, and the arbitrary discharge of processing waste have caused waste of resources, loss of benefits, reduced income, and environmental pollution, seriously affecting the sustainable development of agriculture. Vigorously improving the level of comprehensive utilization of agricultural products and processing by-products is of extremely great significance for increasing the effective supply of agricultural products, guiding agriculture to change its development model and adjust its structure, promoting farmers' employment and income growth, and enhancing agricultural value and efficiency.

Walking through the streets of Xinhui District, Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province, in mid-autumn, a medicinal fragrance drifts into the nostrils. The densely scattered dried tangerine peel shops are precisely the source of this smell. Like many peers, at the flagship store of Xinbaotang Dried Tangerine Peel Co., Ltd. on Qiaoguang North Road, staff members are busy packing and shipping gift boxes of dried tangerine peel stacked into small hills.

However, what is currently taxing the mind of "Xinbaotang" Chairman Chen Baizhong is not the development of e-commerce channels, but how to execute flawlessly on another blueprint that has just been unfurled. In April this year, Xinbaotang reached an industry-university-research cooperation agreement with Wuyi University, a local university in Jiangmen, to jointly tackle comprehensive utilization technology and in-depth development strategies for Xinhui mandarin flesh. "Entering the new century, we are the first to be willing to gnaw on this 'chicken rib' of mandarin flesh processing, and so far the only one." Chen Baizhong said.

250,000 tons of mandarin flesh are discarded every year, polluting the environment and becoming a burden on enterprises

For ordinary citrus, people eat the flesh and discard the peel; but for Xinhui mandarin, "keeping the peel and discarding the flesh" has become the norm in utilization and processing. So-called dried tangerine peel is a medicinal material made from Xinhui mandarins with the flesh and seeds removed, through complex processes such as sun-drying and storage.

Although as early as 2006, Xinhui dried tangerine peel and Xinhui mandarin both won geographical indications for agricultural products, on the track of industrialization and branding, the two have advanced at completely different paces, and their respective values today are worlds apart. In 2013, a 73-year-old "King of Dried Tangerine Peel" sold 100 grams for 125,000 yuan, but Xinhui mandarins cost only three to four yuan per jin, and the peeled mandarin flesh became waste that nobody wanted.

Although the peak season for picking and processing Xinhui mandarins at the end of the year has not yet arrived, in some villages around the Xinhui urban area, this reporter still found mandarin flesh randomly piled beside roads and in ditches. Under the scorching sun, the sour and rotten smell emitted by the mandarin flesh attracted buzzing flies. Many villagers had long since grown accustomed to this. "The mandarin flesh doesn't taste very good, and after peeling it spoils easily, and it can't be sold at the market either." One mandarin farmer said helplessly.

"Calculating based on Xinhui mandarins' current planting area of 70,000 mu and an annual output of 2 tons of mandarin flesh per mu, about 140,000 tons of mandarin flesh become garbage every year." Chen Baizhong said, this is only based on the planting scale within Xinhui District. "If one considers that 'Guangdong dried tangerine peel' mandarins planted in Zhaoqing, Shaoguan, Huizhou, and other counties and districts of Jiangmen will also be concentrated in Xinhui for processing and transit, then about 250,000 tons of mandarin flesh will be discarded every year."

For many dried tangerine peel enterprises in Xinhui, once the production peak arrives, they not only have to find ways to find a home for the large amount of mandarin flesh generated by processing, but also have to pay sanitation departments 30 to 50 yuan per truck to haul the mandarin flesh away. "For some small and medium-sized dried tangerine peel enterprises, the expenditure on collecting, transporting, and treating mandarin flesh over the year is also a considerable burden." Chen Baizhong said.

The early path of juice processing led nowhere; industrial transformation must rely on comprehensive utilization

In Xinhui, the dried tangerine peel industry has accumulated more than 600 years. In modern times, there has been no shortage of people who set their sights on mandarin flesh, trying to turn waste into treasure and dig another "bucket of gold" out of the dried tangerine peel industry, yet often it came to nothing.

The most recent effort appeared in the 1980s. The sudden emergence of a juice factory once made people think that Xinhui mandarin flesh could escape its fate from branch to ditch. And the almost zero raw material cost also made many people place high hopes on this factory. However, because the process was relatively simple, the naturally sour and astringent character of Xinhui mandarin flesh did not disappear with the roar of the press. And because the product had "shortcomings" in taste, marketing, and other aspects, the mandarin flesh juice factory closed in just a few years. After the brief clamor of mandarin flesh processing, the Xinhui dried tangerine peel industry once again returned to its traditional path.

In Chen Baizhong's view, the impulse to process mandarin flesh into juice came more directly from the blowout in Xinhui mandarin planting area brought by the prosperity of the dried tangerine peel industry at that time. "At that time, Xinhui alone had 200,000 mu of mandarin orchards, about three times the current amount." Chen Baizhong said, a large surplus of mandarin flesh naturally brought up the topic of deep processing. "However, if the only approach is to press mandarin flesh into juice, then using such a method to break through the predicament is clearly 'turning to any doctor when seriously ill.'"

Chen Baizhong wears two hats: provincial-level inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of Xinhui dried tangerine peel-making techniques, and fourth-generation head of a century-old dried tangerine peel brand. These are both a halo and a heavy responsibility. It was precisely by virtue of this heavy sense of responsibility that he ultimately resolved to make a name for himself in breaking through the key bottleneck restricting the transformation and upgrading of the dried tangerine peel industry: the processing and utilization of Xinhui mandarin flesh.

Integrating into the health industry cluster, processing organic fertilizer and enzyme products to seek breakthroughs

For the deep processing of Xinhui mandarin flesh, what attracted Chen Baizhong was not the low raw material cost. The "prescription" he wrote was "biotechnology, health industry."

In 2013, Xinbaotang spent 450,000 yuan to commission the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Sun Yat-sen University to conduct research on dried tangerine peel and analyze the pharmacological components of mandarin flesh and seeds. Research showed that compared with other edible citrus, Xinhui mandarin flesh, apart from having a slightly poorer taste, is not lacking in other nutritional and health components, and in some indicators such as amino acids and vitamins it is even slightly superior, making it very suitable for developing functional beverages.

At the key industry project promotion meeting held in Jiangmen City in April this year, the project "Research, Development and Application Demonstration of Comprehensive Utilization Technology for Xinhui Dried Tangerine Peel Processing Waste," jointly created by Xinbaotang and Wuyi University, became one of the important members of the "Great Health Industry Cluster." According to the cooperation agreement, both sides strive to achieve breakthrough progress in converting mandarin flesh into agricultural-grade organic fertilizer and food-grade enzyme products.

In the eyes of Huang Ruilou, deputy district head of Xinhui District, this project will solve the long-standing local problems of discarded mandarin flesh waste and environmental pollution. According to Chen Baizhong's estimate, what this project will bring to the dried tangerine peel industry will be an expected output value of as much as 7 billion yuan.

At the same time, with the renewed breakthrough in mandarin flesh utilization, Xinbaotang, which had already hit the ceiling in the traditional dried tangerine peel industry, is "fermenting." In January 2016, with the establishment of Guangdong Xinbaotang Biotechnology Co., Ltd., Chen Baizhong is transforming from a medicine merchant into a tide rider in the modern biological industry.

"The total investment in the Xinhui mandarin flesh comprehensive utilization project is 380 million yuan, and the plant covers a site area of 83,000 sq m. The enzymes can go into production this year." In Chen Baizhong's vision, both products will serve as independent sub-brands of Xinbaotang, embedded in the modern Xinhui dried tangerine peel health industry chain supported by a model of "high technology + wellness culture + tourism," "thereby achieving the use of the peel to drive the flesh in industrial branding, and the use of the flesh to nourish the peel in industrial diversification."

In Chen Baizhong's eyes, the research and development stage is still the biggest bottleneck. In addition to enzyme and fertilizer production, the mechanical separation technology for flesh and seeds also needs continuous improvement. In the medicinal materials market, the price of mandarin seeds has already reached 5,000 to 8,000 yuan per ton, and once large-scale mass production and processing are achieved, the seeds can complete a magnificent transformation from waste to traditional Chinese medicine decoction pieces and functional foods.