Taiwan's honey jujube ranks first in the world: ten things to know about honey jujube at once
The season for honey jujube, known as the "Taiwan green apple," has arrived. Honey jujube is in fact a low-key pride of Taiwan. Looking across the globe, few rivals can match the texture and flavor of Taiwan's honey jujube, and the country's honey jujube varieties and cultivation techniques are the best in the world. "Upstream and Downstream" interviewed former Kaohsiung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station researcher Chiu Chu-ying, known as the "Honey Jujube Princess," now director of the Banana Research Institute, and Assistant Researcher Kuo Chan-hung of the Fengshan Branch of the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute, to let the experts tell you what makes Taiwan's honey jujube so remarkable.
Q1: Honey jujube, kumquat and red date all have "jujube" in their names. Surely they must be relatives?
Honey jujube and red date both belong to the genus Ziziphus, but they are different species and cannot be crossbred. Kumquat, on the other hand, is another name for the calamondin, which belongs to the genus Citrus, so the relationship is much more distant.
The proper name of honey jujube is Indian jujube (Ziziphus mauritiana), first introduced from India, with records dating back to 1925, but the varieties at that time had thick skins and a strong astringent taste, and each fruit weighed less than 10 grams. Afterwards, domestic agricultural research institutions continued to improve it; by the 1960s each fruit could reach over 100 grams, and some honey jujubes today can weigh even more than 300 grams each.
Q2: Do other countries also have jujubes? How do they differ from Taiwan's honey jujube?
China, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and other Southeast Asian countries, and even Central Asian countries, all grow jujubes, but the goals for foreign jujubes differ from those for Taiwan's honey jujube. Foreign jujubes are small, about 4 to 40 grams, mostly used for processing and winemaking, and vary greatly in shape, some as small as pearls and others shaped like a crescent moon.
The breeding goals for Taiwan's honey jujube are large fruit, sweet and juicy flesh, and a crisp texture, with a roundish shape. Kuo Chan-hung added that every country eats them differently; for example, Thais eat jujubes with dipping sauce, but only Taiwan's honey jujube is eaten fresh.
Q3: What makes Taiwan's honey jujube so remarkable?
Taiwan has a small land area and a dense population, so land costs are relatively high; as a result, honey jujube cultivation is highly intensive. Agricultural research institutions have bred 19 honey jujube varieties with different characteristics, whose growing periods can be staggered to help regulate production and marketing, supplemented by fertilizer management, fruit thinning and other cultivation techniques to improve quality. The two researchers said in unison that Taiwan's honey jujube cultivation techniques and quality are absolutely the best in the world.
Domestic honey jujubes weigh about 120 grams each on average, while those used as gifts weigh about 150 grams. Taiwan's total honey jujube planting area is about 1,900 hectares, with annual output of about 33,000-plus metric tons. Exports have increased year after year; from January to November 2020, 742 metric tons had already been exported, of which 607 metric tons went to China. Excluding exports, Taiwan eats about 260 million or more honey jujubes a year, an average of 10 per person per year.
The two researchers said the honey jujube season is in winter, when there is less fruit, giving honey jujube a huge advantage, and the domestic honey jujube market is not yet saturated: "It's simply not enough to go around!"
Q4: The honey jujubes bought at fruit shops all have green skin. Surely they are all the same, right?
No. All honey jujube varieties have green skin, but they ripen after being picked, and the riper they get, the more the skin color turns yellow. Currently the honey jujube varieties sold domestically include San Mu, Chung Ye, and Kaohsiung No. 11 "Chen Mi," and a new variety, "Xue Li," has just recently hit the market.
Chen Mi takes a long time to grow, and its production period comes after the Lunar New Year, but because it is juicy, thin-skinned and has tender flesh, its fans are still willing to wait for it. The development of this variety has also spread out the honey jujube production period, solving the production and marketing pressure of honey jujubes before the Lunar New Year in the past.
Q5: What kind of honey jujube is "milk honey jujube"?
Milk honey jujube is a product name, not a variety; it counts as a cultivation method. In the past, some farmers fermented expired milk into fertilizer and used that fertilizer to grow honey jujubes, and the ones grown this way were called milk honey jujubes.
Not only milk, but farmers have also been known to make small amounts of compost from expired milk powder and fish bones to supplement the nutrition of honey jujubes.
Q6: Are honey jujubes tastier the bigger they are? Or the greener they are?
Whether the size affects taste depends on the variety. When shopping for honey jujubes at a fruit shop, the key is to look at the glossiness of the skin, and it is recommended to pick the ones that look brightest. As for color, it depends on individual dietary needs; usually a greener skin gives a crisper texture, while a yellower skin tastes sweeter, so it just depends on whether you want to eat them crisp or sweet!
Some honey jujubes before the Lunar New Year show "flower marks," sometimes in a whole patch and sometimes dotted like sesame seeds; this is caused by powdery mildew, and the texture will be a bit rougher when eaten. If it is an ordinary honey jujube that looks bruised from being bumped during transport, the appearance does not affect the inside!
Q7: Once you buy honey jujubes and take them home, must they be refrigerated? What happens if they are not?
No, honey jujubes must be refrigerated once you take them home; after a few days at room temperature they develop an off smell from fermentation. In the refrigerator they must be wrapped in a bag, otherwise the honey jujubes will slowly lose water and shrink.
Q8: Honey jujube is known as the "Taiwan green apple." Is it really better than a green apple?
Honey jujube matches green apples in both sweetness and vitamin C. Especially vitamin C: each 100 grams contains 40 to 60 milligrams, 10 to 20 times more than an apple! Some varieties have vitamin C content even close to that of guava.
Honey jujube is a once-a-year fruit, so the arrival of honey jujube season makes the in-season honey jujubes seem especially fresh and special, with a fine, dense texture that you can't go back from once you've tried it.
Q9: In Jin Yong's novel "The Return of the Condor Heroes," were the jujube-pit nails that Qiu Qianchi spat out honey jujube pits?
Probably not. Compared with honey jujube pits, red date pits are sharper and more suitable as weapons. Honey jujube pits contain a seed kernel; in the past some farmers would dry and store the pits after eating as seeds, but now, because of variety improvement, the pits from eaten honey jujubes have a low germination rate, so if you want to plant them you still have to buy seedlings.
Q10: If jujube pits won't sprout, how do they reproduce?
"You can try planting the pits after eating them, but you might plant for a lifetime and never grow a single jujube tree." Kuo Chan-hung explained that Taiwan's honey jujube developed to be so special only through breeding. Honey jujube must be pollinated by male and female flowers to bear fruit, and the fruit that normally forms has a pit but no kernel. Farmers who want to grow honey jujube trees usually rely on grafting.
Honey jujube trees have thorns, and the remarkable thing is that "even with different varieties, grafting in the same year can bear fruit." Compared with lychee and papaya, which take more than 3 years after grafting to bear fruit, honey jujube grafted in April of this year can bear fruit in November.
As for honey jujube breeding, Kuo Chan-hung said the probability of honey jujube setting seed is low, so breeding relies on a "sea of trees tactic": "Out of twenty or thirty thousand jujubes, maybe one can sprout."
