How is the prickly ash tree grown into a big money-making industry?

These past few days, Zhou Youhua of Xiuzhuang Village, Xianfeng Town, Jiangjin District, Chongqing, has been overjoyed: "This year the prickly ash yield is high and the purchase price is good too. The prickly ash from my 0.53 hectares of land can earn me a hundred thousand yuan or so."

This year, all 33,300 hectares of prickly ash across Jiangjin enjoyed a bumper harvest. Like Zhou Youhua, more than 100,000 prickly ash farming households in Jiangjin have tasted the sweet rewards.

When it comes to the good harvest of prickly ash, the growers are most grateful to one person, and that is Chen Xiuqiang, president of the Jiangjin District Prickly Ash Industry Association.

More than a decade ago, Chen Xiuqiang developed a technique for pruning and shaping prickly ash trees, and first selected 20 prickly ash trees in Zhou Youhua's orchard for an experimental demonstration. "Our thinking back then was that the taller and bigger the prickly ash tree, the better. If all the branches were cut off, wouldn't the prickly ash yield drop?" Zhou Youhua recalled that at the time none of the growers agreed to take part in Chen Xiuqiang's experiment, afraid he would kill their prickly ash trees. "But by the second year, the yield of those 20 prickly ash trees was actually a good deal higher than in previous years."

The growers flocked to him to "learn from the master." While teaching the technique, Chen Xiuqiang also kept improving it through experiments, raising the quality and yield of Jiangjin prickly ash. He successively explored and improved new techniques such as prickly ash grafting, dwarfed close planting, pest and disease control, balanced fertilization, main-branch retraction and renovation of aging trees, shortening the fruiting period of prickly ash from the original three years to one and a half years, and raising the per-unit yield from the original three to five hundred jin to 400-7,500 kg.

In order to spread these technical achievements, the prickly ash association organized experts and technicians to go down to the grassroots to hold technical lectures and on-site demonstrations, established 28 prickly ash science popularization demonstration bases, and developed 5,100 science and technology demonstration households, driving more farmers to plant prickly ash and plant it well. Today, the prickly ash area in Jiangjin District has reached 33,300 hectares, with an annual output of nearly 200,000 tons.

With such a large prickly ash output, how can it be turned into real income? With the support of the Jiangjin District Association for Science and Technology, the prickly ash association actively expanded its social service functions, acting as a bridge, bringing in buyers, organizing production and marketing matchmaking, and helping the growers find sales channels.

"We joined forces with prickly ash processing plants to enzyme-inactivate and vacuum cold-store the fresh prickly ash picked by farmers, so that the fresh prickly ash, which originally was available for only about two months each year, can now be supplied year-round. This not only extends the sales period of prickly ash but also increases farmers' income," Chen Xiuqiang said. "We have also set up an e-commerce platform to sell our products online. Now Jiangjin prickly ash has no trouble finding a market."

Today, the annual output value of Jiangjin prickly ash reaches more than 1 billion yuan. The tiny prickly ash tree has been "grown" into a big money-making industry, and the growers' wallets have bulged. Zijing Village in Jiaping Town was formerly a municipal-level poverty-stricken village, and now through planting prickly ash it has achieved whole-village poverty alleviation and prosperity.

Zhou Youhua, who was the first to receive technical guidance back then, also used the money earned from planting prickly ash to buy a house in the city. When busy, he lives in the countryside tending his prickly ash trees; when free, he goes to the city for a short stay, living an "amphibious" life. Years of planting experience and training have also made him a "local expert" in prickly ash cultivation, and in recent years he has often been invited to various places to guide prickly ash planting. "Last year alone I traveled to several provinces, and one trip could earn me three to five thousand yuan!" Having just sold the prickly ash from his fields, Zhou Youhua has already bought his ticket and is ready to go share his "planting know-how."

Chen Xiuqiang has not been idle either. He was elected a delegate to the Ninth National Congress of the China Association for Science and Technology, and also received titles such as "Advanced Leader in Popularizing Science and Technology to Benefit Farmers and Revitalize Villages." "The current prickly ash variety in Jiangjin, 'Jiuyeqing,' has been planted for many years and is already nearing its decline phase. Through grafting and hybridization experiments, we have bred a new variety," Chen Xiuqiang said. The new variety has stronger disease resistance and simpler cultivation and management, and its per-unit yield is 250 kg more than the existing variety. "We plan to start promoting the new variety at the end of the year, so that the growers' road to prosperity grows ever wider!"