Promoted as a health food, the versatile wolfberry is boosting rural incomes
Ask any Chinese to name a little fruit that can be eaten fresh or dried, used as medicine, made into tea, stewed or fermented into wine, and most will say gouqi, or the wolfberry.
A massive marketing drive accompanied by a health food craze has made the wolfberry a star cash crop and lifted thousands of farmers in the arid northwest out of poverty.
Zhongning city , in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region , is China's undisputed wolfberry capital, producing one-third of the country's crop last year. The increase in demand for the fruit since the late 1990s has transformed the local economy, accounting for 40 per cent of farmers' income and about 200,000 seasonal jobs from June to October.
Since 1997, the area of land devoted to wolfberry cultivation in Zhongning has grown from 360 to 7,000 hectares. But while production has risen 1,100 per cent, revenue has only increased 730 per cent.
The bush which bears the juicy fruit has been cultivated in China for more than 600 years and wolfberries are known for their health benefits: the berries contain more beta-carotene than carrots and as much vitamin C as oranges.