Pucker up for lemon festival in Chongqing

On Tuesday morning, at the Tongnan International Lemon Festival 2022 opening ceremony in Chongqing's Tongnan district, three trucks loaded with 75 tons of fresh lemons departed from Chongqing Huida Lemon Technology Group.

Within 12 days, they'll reach Russia and Thailand, according to Dai Xiaoqiang, CEO of the group.

Tongnan, located on the boundary of Sichuan province and Chongqing, has an average temperature of 17.9 C and vast, fertile alluvial plains. It is one of the most famous vegetable bases in western China and one of the world's top lemon-producing areas.

Tongnan's annual lemon output of 280,000 tons is valued at more than 5 billion yuan ($688.5 million), said Ni Biao, deputy director of the Tongnan Agriculture Science and Technology Promotion Center.

In addition to the fresh lemon exports, other fruit will go through soaking, cleaning and scanning and enter a deep-processing phase that uses all parts of the fruit.

At the ceremony, the world's first pectin production line — which can process both dry and wet lemons at Chongqing Mengtai Biotech Co, a leading company in lemon deep-processing — began full operations.

"Most of the world's pectin is made from apple and orange peelings, but we use lemon peels, which are more fragrant have a more beautiful color," said Liu Yancheng, director of Mengtai's postdoctoral workstation.

"China relies heavily on importing pectin, which we need," Liu said, adding that the pectin, widely used as gelling agent and stabilizer, is an important additive in food and medicine, including such things as yogurt, soft sweets, pills and countless other products.

Having made a technical breakthrough in extracting pectin from the lemons, the company is accelerating its output. Liu said the deep-processing line will have an output value of around 800 million yuan, and it will increase the farmers' annual income by 10 to 15 percent.

At the ceremony, the China Lemon Industry Technology Innovation Alliance, an integrated information platform for the lemon industry, was established.

"It is of great strategic significance to accelerate the development of bio-manufacturing. It can protect people's lives and health while improving comprehensive agricultural production capacity," said biochemist Zheng Yuguo, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, at a lemon industry development forum held in Tongnan.

According to the local government, 39 purchase orders for lemons valued at 7.2 billion yuan were signed during the festival.