China set to become the world's largest market for blueberries

The blueberry is currently the world's number two large berry after the strawberry. The president of China's Blueberry Association and a professor at the Jilin Agricultural University, Li Yadong, pointed out during a presentation on the analysis of data in global blueberry production that the total output of blueberries worldwide increased from 23.6 thousand tons in 1995 to 66.4 thousand tons in 2015.

Blueberries currently on the market are mainly for fresh consumption, taking up 65% of total volume. With regard to potential consumption, the supply of blueberries still does not meet the demand in domestic and international markets. Looking at individual countries, the ten foremost blueberry producers are The United States, Canada, Chile, China, Poland, Peru, Mexico, Spain, Argentine, and Morocco. The total output of blueberries from these ten countries covers 90% of the total global output.

In 1983, the Jilin Agricultural University took the initiative to import a high-quality breed of blueberry from The United States. This breed passed through many years of regional experimentation, until in 1999, professor Li Yadong examined and approved the final selection China's first high-quality breed of blueberry, the "beautiful ascension". In doing so he filled an empty page in the history of China's blueberry cultivation. In the last ten years, China's blueberry industry has developed at an insane pace.

According to the most recent statistics, in 2017 China's blueberry industry had already reached a surface area of 46 thousand hectares and an output of 115 thousand tons. The three provinces in China where blueberries were first cultivated on a large scale, Shandong, Guizhou, and Liaoning, are also the three provinces with the most surface area for cultivation and the highest output. Shandong takes a lead position in surface area and output, but Yunnan and Sichuan have recently become the provinces with the fastest developing blueberry industries.

The main reasons for future limits to the blueberry industry are global labor force deficits and frost damage to blueberries in the Northern Hemisphere. In the coming ten years, China will develop at a fast pace and hopes to become the world's largest blueberry market. It is predicted that in 2025, the surface area for blueberry cultivation in China will reach 70 thousand hectares and the output will reach 400 thousand tons, creating a blueberry market worth 40.000 million yuan [6,147 million USD]. At the same time, encouragement from key enterprises and coordination from industry associations will create a fundamental pattern in the blueberry industry where significant growers and cooperatives (with a surface area of 7-33 hectares) become the main producers.