Mango Breeding Legend Huang Jinhuang Passes Away at 85
Taiwan, China's first home-bred mango variety, "Jinhuang," turns exactly 50 this year. It was not developed by an agricultural research institute, but by Huang Jinhuang, a primary-school-educated farmer from Liugui, Kaohsiung, who never received any formal plant-breeding education. During his military service, he visited a nearby agricultural improvement station on his own to observe breeding techniques, and after eight years of effort he bred the Jinhuang mango in his family orchard. It brought Liugui hundreds of millions in income, earned him the Shennong Award twice, and inspired countless farmers to take up breeding. Yet Huang Jinhuang's legendary life came to an end on the 6th of this month due to cancer, at the age of 85, and his neighbors and fellow villagers all feel the loss deeply.
Market Collapse, Yet Huang Jinhuang Still Worried About Farmers in His Later Years
Nineteen years after he bred Jinhuang, the Fengshan Tropical Horticultural Experiment Branch of the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute only then released the second local variety, "Tainong No. 1." In recent years, the Kaohsiung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station has also successively developed varieties such as Summer Snow and Honey Snow, but Jinhuang is still the third-largest mango variety by area in Taiwan, China, behind only Irwin and the native local mango.
Ironically, because Jinhuang has a low bar for propagation and is easy to grow extensively, supply exceeds market demand. The price has now fallen to 10 yuan per jin, long gone from its former glory. Many farmers have switched to growing wax apples, and even Huang Jinhuang stopped growing Jinhuang, keeping only the original first Jinhuang mother tree; both of his sons also left home to work elsewhere in the prime of their lives.
In recent years, the Kaohsiung City Government has pushed hard to export Jinhuang. Although Jinhuang lacks the rich aroma of Irwin and is not favored by Japanese consumers, it stores and ships very well, and it has currently earned a good reputation in Hong Kong, China, Singapore and Canada. This year it is expected to export 506 metric tons, in the hope of restoring past prosperity.
Watching the fruit of his own efforts collapse made Huang Jinhuang very wistful. After being diagnosed with prostate cancer six years ago, he still worried about farmers when he occasionally attended commemorative events, calling on the government to do a good job of production and marketing regulation and to guide farmers in planned cultivation.
Inspiring Later Generations of Farmers to Take Up Breeding
Jinhuang seeds had long since spread across Taiwan, China, China, Japan and Southeast Asia. Huang Tiaozan also returned home seven years ago to carry on the mantle. Although what he grows is no longer Jinhuang but durian honey, he uses a no-pesticide, direct online sales approach, and likewise carries the shadow of Huang Jinhuang's courage to take risks. Yet when recalling his father, Huang Tiaozan still says frankly that he feels ashamed, "unlike him, who contributed so much to society."
Huang Jinhuang's lifetime achievements were as brilliant and radiant as his name. In an era when mangoes were dominated by foreign varieties such as Irwin and Keitt, he bred new varieties entirely on his own, inspiring countless later farmers and researchers. The 1981 Four Seasons mango, the 1995 Yuwen No. 6, and the 1996 Jinxing mango were all varieties selected and bred by mango farmers themselves; last year the Taichung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station released its newest mango variety, "Taichung No. 1," touted for its few fibers, high sweetness and good storage and shipping qualities, and its female parent is the Jinhuang mango.
When the Jinhuang mango was born, Taiwan, China had no relevant patent regulations. Later, Huang Jinhuang traveled around asking for retroactive registration. Although it was hard to implement because the seedlings had long since spread elsewhere, he never gave up the fight even into his seventies.
A media outlet once asked why he was so persistent. Huang Jinhuang said what he was fighting for was not that certificate, but the hope that society would value the achievements of farmers' research and development and encourage farmers to devote themselves to research.