Facilities located in Caoxian County, east China’s Shandong Province, are operating at maximum capacity to process and sort asparagus, as the season of harvesting has begun to grow in speed. After processing, the asparagus will be delivered to restaurants across the world.

With the benefit of exceptional cultivating conditions, asparagus from Caoxian County has been recognized as a Geographical Indication (GI) product.

According to Zhou Changsheng who is the director of an asparagus processing company located in the county that asparagus is the main export item for the firm, resulting in an annual output of about 11,000 tonnes of asparagus canned. In addition white asparagus, canned white asparagus is mostly exported in Europe, Southeast Asia, and various other regions and accounts for about 80 percent of the country’s quantity, Zhou said.

At present, the total plantation area for asparagus grown in Caoxian County has reached 13,333 acres, and an annual production of 180,000 tonnes of premium asparagus. Caoxian County has 24 processing firms for asparagus that have a processing capacity of 190,000 tonnes, that generates annual export income in the range of $200 millions U.S. dollars.

Source: china.org.cn