Chongqing - The Wushan Crisp Plum season will kick off on July 2 and extend until late August, according to a press conference in Chongqing on June 28. 

Concurrently, the "Industry Brain + Future Orchard" initiative for Wushan Crisp Plums will also begin operations.

Freshly harvested Wushan Crisp Plums ready for distribution. (Photo/Wushan County)

A sophisticated cloud warehouse electronic trading system has been established to ensure consumers have access to authentic and fresh Wushan Crisp Plums. This system seamlessly integrates every facet of production, supply, sales, service, and credit through meticulous resource allocation and data analysis. This enables distributors and core channel merchants to precisely track supply volumes, varieties, and origin information of agricultural products within the cloud warehouse, thereby ensuring an uninterrupted flow from production to sales. The digital orchard system has been deployed across 998 standard orchards in Wushan, covering an area of 120,000 mu (80 square kilometers).

The "Industry Brain + Future Orchard" for Wushan Crisp Plums will officially launch on July 2, involving 3,632 farmers. This initiative streamlines the entire data collection, application, and service process from production to market sales and government management, providing comprehensive and full-spectrum support for the development of the crisp plum industry. It achieves efficient coordination across the entire supply chain, from planting and picking to sorting, packaging, cold chain logistics, processing, and sales, ensuring complete transparency from farm to table. It has also been successfully integrated into Chongqing's "Digital Agriculture" platform.

Selling crisp plums. (Photo/Wushan County)

Regarding post-harvest storage, Wushan has formulated relevant technical procedures to effectively address challenges related to freshness retention, short shelf life, and high transportation damage rates. The cold storage period has been extended from 7-10 days to over 60 days, and the shelf life of the crisp plums has been extended from 3-5 days to over ten days. This ensures that Wushan Crisp Plums can be sold more widely and remain fresh for longer. Notably, Wushan has partnered with Freshippo and YIGO to establish direct sales stores, making it more convenient for consumers to purchase the most authentic Wushan Crisp Plums.     

Busy crisp plum trading at the bustling water transport terminal. (Photo/Wushan County)

For the transportation of Wushan Crisp Plums, the Chongqing Municipal Postal Administration has organized 21 cargo drones in Wushan, integrating resources from transportation, postal, and supply stations to develop a low-altitude logistics network. This initiative explores an integrated model of immediate response, drone transfer, and dedicated flight routes, overcoming various time, space, and geography limitations. This has led to the establishment of an air-to-air docking delivery logistics system for Wushan Crisp Plums. The transit time from orchards to Wushan Airport has been reduced from the previous land-air combined transport of one hour to a rapid 8-minute transfer, improving efficiency by 86.7%. This achieves instant transfer and air-to-air combined transport when sufficient quantity is reached. Direct flights for Wushan Crisp Plums have been launched, ensuring next-day delivery to over a thousand cities nationwide, enabling consumers to order today and receive plums tomorrow.

Regarding the extended industries of Wushan Crisp Plums, Wushan has attracted food production enterprises to establish a comprehensive industry chain standard system. This system actively develops and produces deep-processed products such as crisp plum wine, candied crisp plums, crisp plum snacks, and crisp plum mooncakes, which are particularly popular among young consumers. Additionally, Wushan is committed to creating two large-scale rural ecological tourism landscapes and hosting the annual "Chinese Plum Township · Three Gorges Sea of Flowers" Plum Blossom Festival, thereby allowing more farmers to benefit from tourism.

Numerous online influencers set up live streams to sell crisp plums on-site. (Photo/Wushan County)

Furthermore, Wushan County is dedicated to promoting Wushan Crisp Plums globally. It focuses on enhancing varieties, improving quality, building brands, and standardizing production to establish the premier plum brand in China. In terms of brand building, Wushan aims to highlight local specialties by uniformly releasing the Wushan Crisp Plum logo, packaging, visual image, advertising elements, and traceability codes. Over the years, Wushan has hosted seven "Wushan Crisp Plum · Global Plum Promotion" brand promotion conferences, been selected for China Central Television's "National Brand Plan" for five consecutive years, and has garnered numerous accolades including China Famous Fruit, National High-Quality Plum Gold Award, National Famous Specialty Agricultural Products, National Geographic Indication Agricultural Product, and China Climate Good Product Certification.

In 2024, Wushan Crisp Plums will be cultivated in 22 towns across the county, covering a planting scale of 300,000 mu. This initiative will help over 20,000 farming households increase their income, forming a robust crisp plum industry cluster centered on Wushan. It will transform "small fruits" into a "big industry" with high efficiency and nationwide recognition.