Kudzu root planting puts young man on the road to prosperity

"Kudzu root not only has relatively high economic value and medicinal value, but is also easy to cultivate and tolerant of drought and poor soil. It can be planted on hillsides in front of and behind houses, and one-year kudzu root can yield at least more than 2,000 kg per mu..." On December 17, 2015, at the kudzu root planting base in Longtang Village, Baijie Town, Naxi District, Luzhou City, Sichuan, a young man was putting the dug kudzu roots into a back basket while happily explaining to this writer the benefits of growing kudzu root.

This young man is Zou Bin, who returned to his hometown in 2012 to start a business and began large-scale kudzu root planting. As the saying goes, all beginnings are hard. After Zou Bin planted 1,000 kudzu root seedlings in the field in front of his home in Sichuan, he went to the field every day to water, inspect the seedlings, apply fertilizer, check for gaps and replant missing seedlings, and prune and train the vines. In order to master kudzu root cultivation techniques, he also searched online for relevant planting and management experience, learning and exploring as he went.

After the trial planting succeeded in one go, starting in 2013, Zou Bin began cultivating superior kudzu root seedlings to overcome the problem of seedling constraints. Half a year later, by cutting strong bud nodes and inserting them into prepared and disinfected cultivation soil, he successfully cultivated tens of thousands of vigorous seedlings.

The yield of one-year kudzu root reached 2,500 kg per mu, and the yield of two-year kudzu root reached 5,000 kg per mu, and the longer the planting time, the greater the yield. Faced with an annual market volume of at least more than 500 tons of fresh kudzu root, as well as its rich starch, protein, and multiple trace elements such as calcium and iron and multiple amino acids, Zou Bin promptly joined hands with a kudzu root processing factory in Chongqing, expanding kudzu root products from a single kudzu powder into a series of products such as kudzu root tea, kudzu root wine, and kudzu root noodles, extending the kudzu root industry chain. Because kudzu root itself is a traditional Chinese medicine, as soon as Zou Bin's kudzu root series products left the factory, they quickly became popular in the market. While occupying 90% of the Luzhou kudzu root market, they were also sold to cities such as Chengdu, Chongqing, and Shanghai, achieving annual income of more than 10 million yuan, with value increased by a full 10 times compared with fresh kudzu root.