Chinese atemoya producers could catch up to Taiwan’s yield and quality within two years, threatening Taitung County producers, Taitung County Councilor Huang Chih-wei (黃治維) said today.
Atemoya, also called pineapple custard apples, are a hybrid between cherimoya and sugar apples, notable for their pale green and bumpy skin.
Ninety percent of atemoya grown in Taiwan originates in Taitung County and the majority is exported to China.
Photo: Huang Ming-tang, Taipei Times
China has replicated Taitung’s planting technology in Hainan, Yunnan, Guangxi and Guangdong provinces, with China’s production now triple that of Taiwan and a farming area double the size, Huang said.
As quality improves, yield is increasing year-on-year, he said.
In the next two years, Chinese competitors could push out Taiwanese producers, he said, urging farmers to stop planting the crop and the Taitung County Government to take notice of the threat to local producers.
Taitung producers began exporting atemoya to China 10 years ago, with prices peaking at more than NT$100 per jin (600g).
Total farming area now exceeds 2,000 hectares and the fruit has become a vital part of the local economy, with farmers calling it “green gold.”
However, imports were suspended in September 2021, with Chinese customs officials citing “repeated discovery of agricultural pests” in Taiwanese shipments.
Imports resumed in 2023, but last year China imposed tariffs of 20 percent.
The local government had already taken into account the potential threat of Chinese atemoya production and is working to increase exports to Southeast Asia to diversify the market, Taitung County Agriculture Department Director Hsu Chia-hao (許家豪) said.
Taitung still produces the best-quality fruits due to optimal climate and soil conditions, and would be marketed to China as a high-end product, he said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS