Huazhou, a county-level city in Maoming, held an activity to appreciate exocarpium citri grandis flowers on March 11.

Huazhou in Maoming holds an exocarpium citri grandis flower appreciation activity. [Photo/WeChat account: maofabu]

Exocarpium citri grandis, also known as Huajuhong, is a tree used in traditional Chinese medicines.

The activity aims to promote the integrated development of agriculture, commerce, culture and tourism. 

People take photos with exocarpium citri grandis trees. [Photo/WeChat account: maofabu]

The main venue of the activity was located in Daling village, Pingding town, and the sub-venues were located in the exocarpium citri grandis planting bases in the Guangdong Agricultural Reclamation Hongfeng Farm, and Ligang town's Jiangangling and Juzhou Ecological Park.

In addition, Huazhou issued its logo which incorporates exocarpium citri grandis, and built an exocarpium citri grandis industrial chain committee. Huazhou people's government also signed a cooperation agreement with the Maoming Supply and Marketing Cooperative Association to boost the exocarpium citri grandis industry.

At present, the exocarpium citri grandis base in Huazhou has reached 116,200 mu (7,747 hectares), with an annual fresh fruit output of 60,000 metric tons, and a dried fruit output of 12,000 tons. It has 499 exocarpium citri grandis enterprises involved in the planting, processing, and sales, with more than 350,000 employees, and an output value of 7.2 billion yuan ($1 billion).

The city has developed more than 60 kinds of exocarpium citri grandis products, including raw material, medicine, food and handicrafts. The processing conversion rate has reached 100 percent, the annual processing capacity has reached 100,000 tons, and the standardized production level has reached 95 percent. The city is also trying to improve its seed coverage rate, and has built 25 demonstration seedling breeding bases.