The launch ceremony for this year's lychee brand marketing campaign in Gaozhou, a county-level city in Maoming, was held in the city on March 13.

The launch ceremony for this year's lychee brand marketing campaign in Gaozhou, a county-level city in Maoming, is held in the city on March 13. [Photo/WeChat account: maofabu]

The campaign is being guided by the Guangdong Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and hosted by the Gaozhou government. It is hoped it will promote the construction of the Gaozhou lychee brand and the high-quality development of the local lychee industry, and boost rural revitalization.

The series of events include a flower-admiring tour in March, a lychee origin tracing experience and a production and marketing matchmaking event in April, a lychee-picking live-stream in early May, and a lychee focused marketing event in Shanghai and Beijing in mid-May.

In addition, training courses for lychee growers and marketing talents will be carried out as part of the campaign, along with related skills competitions.

Gaozhou's lychee planting history can be traced back to the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC). The Gongyuan Garden in the city's Genzi town, an ancient lychee orchard that was built up during the Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-907) dynasties, contains nine lychee trees of more than 1,300 years old.

Gaozhou currently has a lychee planting area of 550,000 mu (36,666.67 hectares), and boasts a yearly lychee yield of more than 200,000 metric tons, accounting for one tenth of global production. The city is hence dubbed the "hometown of lychee in China".

The city has formed a relatively complete lychee industrial chain covering production, processing, storage, cold chain, logistics, sales, product development, brand building, cultural creativity, and leisure tourism.