Chinese-grown durians remain inaccessible to domestic consumers due to high price, low yields

Commercial durian farming in China started gaining traction in 2018 and the country had its first major durian harvest just last year, which yielded only 50 tons.

Despite production being expected to quadruple to 200 tons this year, it will still represent only a fraction of the 1.4 million tons of durians that China imported from Southeast Asia last year.

“The output is still very small because the trees have not been growing for long enough,” Feng Xuejie, the director of the Institute of Tropical Fruit Trees at the Hainan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, noted.

“It takes six or seven years for the yields to start flourishing.”

Due to their low yields, Chinese durians are costly, currently fetching 120-140 yuan (US$16.5-19.25), three times the prices of Thai imports.

“They are 60 yuan a jin (500g)! Those from Thailand are just 20 yuan to 30 yuan a jin,” Ai Dong, a durian seller in Beijing, told The Straits Times when inquired about Hainan durians.

“Too expensive, can’t sell them,” he exclaimed.

Feng anticipates that prices will likely drop as production increases in the next two to three years, though this goal is fraught with challenges.

Most of China’s durians are cultivated in Hainan, the only province with a tropical climate suitable for growing the fruit.

While there are initiatives to boost durian production, the region’s limited capacity and unpredictable weather, including the threat of typhoons, pose significant obstacles, according to Thai news outlet The Nation.

Durian also needs specific soil and climate to flourish and those in Hainan are not ideal for the smelly fruit.

“Very few places [in China] can grow durians,” Feng said. “We are restricted by the land available.”

These natural constraints prevent domestic durian production from expanding to a large scale, he noted.

Other economic factors also make it difficult for Chinese durians to compete with those grown in Southeast Asian suppliers.

“We cannot compete with Southeast Asia on quantity. Land and labor costs are also higher in China,” he noted.

Thus, Feng believes Chinese-produced durians will likely not affect sales of imported durians and only supplement imports.

According to the durian expert, the domestic durian industry should focus on growing high-end, high-quality products instead.

Farmers in Hainan are actively working towards this goal by experimenting to improve the taste of their durians.

When the stinky fruit was harvested in China last year, it had a very mild taste and smell and was nowhere near as creamy as imported varieties, as reported by the South China Morning Post.

Zhang Mingming, who owns a durian orchard in Hainan’s Baoting county, said that this year he has managed to significantly enhance the home-grown fruit’s flavor by adjusting the fertilizer formula.

However, he acknowledged that the quality of Hainan durians remains inconsistent, as the industry is still in the early stages of development.

More farming techniques research and experimentation are necessary to enhance the fruit’s quality, he concluded.

China imported 202,500 tons of fresh durian for US$1.09 billion in the first four months of 2024, according to customs data.