Have you noticed that eating fruit is like eating sugar now? Watermelon, melon and grapes are sweetly sweet, and the passion fruit, known for its sour and sweet, has a pure sweet variety. They're getting sweeter, and they're not fruity -- sweet, sour, fruity. So what happened to the fruity taste of childhood? Was it replaced by technology and hard work?

"Sweet Critical Strike" This "sweet critical strike" starts with the noble fruit. In recent years, noble fruits have emerged one after another: blueberries, avocados, kiwifruit, cherries... Each is more expensive than the last, with blueberries costing 19.9 yuan for a small box, golden kiwifruit from New Zealand costing 10 yuan and Chilean cherries selling for 75 yuan a catty at their peak. Each is expensive enough for the middle class and expensive enough for the common people. In addition to the avocados on the fitness track, these noble fruits have common advantages: large size, beautiful appearance, and high sweetness. Cherries are graded according to diameter size, from J grade to JJJ grade, the higher the grade the more expensive. Red strawberry is the level of appearance of this subdivision, bright color, there is a "ruby" that is seen. In recent years, small blueberries have appeared 24 mm "Big MAC" big fruit, priced at up to 30 yuan/box in supermarkets, and taste sweet grapes.

With "bigger, sweeter and more beautiful", noble fruits are gradually loved by consumers, and also increase its exports. Over the past seven years, Chilean cherry exports to China have grown at an average annual rate of about 29%. In 2023, New Zealand exported 104,000 tons of kiwifruit to China, with a total value of 3.16 billion yuan. Like the rising stars of the idol industry, the highly sought after noble fruits are also quietly "modifying" industry standards. For example, the more and more fruits began to have grades, the Tunisian soft-seed pomegranate as many as five grades; Fruits with names gradually emerged: super sweet banana, bee sugar plum, black diamond pineapple, Zhangji strawberry, Kylin watermelon, Yangshan peach... The sweetness of the fruit is also gradually improved in this process. In 2009, the average sugar content of the seven seedless watermelon varieties on the market was less than 10%, and the highest sugar content was only 11.7%. Today, high dessert varieties abound, such as 8424, Kirin and early spring carbine, with sugar content as high as 13.5% at 2K centers in the United States. In the 1990s, the sugar content of rock orange was about 7%, and in recent years, the sugar content of Prince sweet orange is as high as 11%. Even less sweet blueberries contain five times as much sugar as they did 10 years ago. In general, the fruit field is refined and indexed. In addition, in addition to the leadership of noble fruits, hundred orchards have also made several contributions. Based on taste, Baiyuoru has developed A four-level fruit quality grading system, namely, signature, A, B and C grades, with specific parameters including "four degrees, one safety", that is, sugar acidity, freshness, crispness, tenderness, flavor and safety, supplemented by size, color, defect and so on.

The move is also known as the first full-category standard in the fruit industry. What was fruit like in the old days? Everyone has their own opinion. There are now uniform standards for good fruit, with objective data for size, shape and sweetness. This is changing consumer choice, after all, indicators are more intuitive than fruit taste. Taking kiwifruit as an example, in supermarkets and fruit stores, Jia Pei's golden kiwifruit is always the most expensive and is always placed in the recommended position, which makes people unconsciously think that bigger, fuller, smoother surface kiwifruit is the best quality. At the same time, the production side also sees targets for improvement. Breeding is the main means, known as "hexagonal longan" "brittle honey" sugar content of up to 20-24%, is a new breed of longan and litchi cross, by Professor Liu Chengming's team in South China Agricultural University. Increasingly sophisticated cultivation techniques are also helping. Blending fertilisers, improving the soil and increasing the temperature difference between day and night all help fruit accumulate sugar. It can be said that the popularity of noble fruits has hit the "good fruit" version, consumers see the high quality, the production end sees the profit, the balance of supply and demand, and then under the collusion of the two parties, the entire fruit market is developing in the direction of "high sweet".

But markets can get out of hand. A classic example is the Sunshine rose, which goes from rare to overflowing, sweet to boring in just seven years. Around 2016, the sunshine rose was sold for 300 yuan a bunch because of its small yield, crisp and sweet flesh, and rose aroma, so it was called "Hermes in the grape industry". The high price has made the grape industry rich myth, the industry spread such a news: Shaanxi Weinan a farmer by 5 acres of grapes net profit of 680,000 yuan. For fruit farmers, high profits are the best driving force, coincided with the localized cultivation technology of sunshine rose in 2016 finally mature, this variety does not pick the soil, so a huge national planting campaign has begun. This year, the domestic sunshine rose planting area is only 100,000 mu, things are rare for precious. By 2021, the cultivar will have spread across the country, producing as far north as Shaanxi, Ningxia and Xinjiang, and as far south as Guangxi, Hunan and Yunnan. According to the "2022 China Sunshine Rose Grape Industry Data Analysis Report" released by Cloud Fruit Industry Brain, the national sunshine rose planting area in 2021 is about 312,100 mu, a surge of 211.79% in five years.

In order to compete for the market, some people began to take a lot of routes - large quantity and low price, generally per mu production of about 3,000 pounds, some fruit farmers increased the per mu output to 6,000 pounds or even 10,000 pounds. What if we increase production? Bulking agent is a good tool, after excessive use, the sun rose head is full enough, open a look, but it is hollow. Originally, under the action of science and technology and vigorous activity, the fruits can not spend the normal growth period, absorb enough soil nutrients, resulting in incomplete growth. In order to market as soon as possible, some fruit farmers have used ripening agents to forcibly accelerate the ripening period of the fruit. In the market, once someone starts to compete at a low price, there will be more people playing at a lower price, and the coffee and milk tea market is worse, which leads to a result: the price of sunshine roses is getting lower and lower, and the quality is getting lower and lower. Eventually, "ridiculously sweet" and "no aroma" became mainstream reviews, and this top-flow fruit fell off the pedestal in 2023. Once they start cutting corners, growers will find more. In addition to expanding agents and ripening agents, there are sweeteners and deacidifiers, whether in Pin-duo or Alibaba search "fruit sweetener", you can find a lot of products, advertising slogan is also very attractive: a spray is very sweet; Sweet teeth, sweeten more than 15 degrees. For eager fruit farmers, why bother to cultivate when they can take a shortcut? The larger context is that China is a big fruit consumer. Frost & Sullivan data show that the size of China's fruit retail market in 2021 is 1.22 trillion yuan, and it is expected that by 2026, the industry scale is expected to grow to 1.8 trillion yuan.