Xinjiang Headline News (text / reporter Kang Haoyan photo / correspondent Zhang Junhua) Beat melon seeds, also called watermelon seeds, is a leisure snack that people love to eat in their leisure time, it is not usually eating watermelon spit out of the seeds, but from the special seed watermelon, also known as beating melon, this kind of melon will be broken and thrown in the ground when ripe, only selling melon seeds also has good income.
On September 4, in the drying field of Koktas Village, Saltam Township, Haba River County, Altay Region, growers were drying the freshly harvested melon seeds, and this year, 100,000 mu of melons were planted in Haba River County, and the melon seeds had not yet been bagged, and had been ordered by merchants from all over the country.
“The villagers’ melons have almost been harvested, and I am also grasping it.” Habimullah Jumatola, a villager in the village of Quaktas, said it was his turn to take seeds to work in his family’s more than 80 acres of melon fields. A row of beating melons is neatly arranged in the field 4 or 5 meters apart, the tractor with the seed picker to start the operation, the seed taker has a wheel full of iron skewers, along a row of melons, like a toothpick to tie a small tomato to “swallow” the melon into the machine, the machine “spitting” the melon seeds into the pocket next to it while walking, and the chopped melon skin and melon bowl are directly poured back into the ground to make manure.
Habimula Jumatola calculated an account for reporters, an average yield of melon seeds per mu of land is about 100 kg, now the market purchase price is 12-15 yuan / kg, each mu of field has more than 1200 yuan of income, this year his 80 mu of melon can harvest about 100,000 yuan. “Now it is all mechanical seeding, drip irrigation, mechanical harvesting, and the county’s agricultural technicians often come to provide technical guidance on pest control. Planting melons saves labor and effort and is easy to manage, and there are many merchants who come to harvest, and I think there will be more next year. He said with a smile that after harvesting, he should quickly send the melon seeds to the drying field to dry, clear and bag, if the quality is affected by the rain, it will not be sold at a good price.
Wang Qiang, a Jiangxi merchant who has been buying melon seeds for five years in Habahe County, has confirmed that the melon seeds are of good quality in the village drying field, and is contacting the processing plant in the wagon to be transported back to Jiangxi for frying and processing, “This year, we are going to buy 300 tons of melon seeds, all of which have been ordered in advance by contacting some old growers who have been supplying for many years, otherwise they may return empty-handed later.” He said that the varieties of melons here are mainly black small pieces and red small pieces, and the domestic market demand for the black melon seeds produced is large, and every year when the harvest season comes, merchants from Jiangxi, Henan, Guangdong, Northeast and other places flock to it. Red melon seeds, Yunnan, Guangxi and other places have more merchants, mainly exported to Southeast Asia and other places. Although the price fluctuates according to the quality of the seeds and market conditions, with the order-based planting procurement of large enterprises and the increase of local processing plants in Xinjiang in recent years, high-quality melon seeds are often in short supply.
There are also these places in Xinjiang where melons are grown
This year, the 102,600 mu of melons planted in Habahe County are expected to produce more than 10,000 tons of melon seeds, which is just a microcosm of Xinjiang’s bumper harvest.
Yang Wenjia, a villager at the Koshbik Seed Farm in Emin County, Tacheng Prefecture, also harvested 50 acres of melons this year, and villagers here have been growing melons for decades. He also remembers that at the end of 2001, melon seeds were about 3 yuan per kilogram, in 2009 they reached 10 yuan per kilogram, and in recent years it has stabilized at 12 yuan.
It is understood that the production areas of Xinjiang melons are mainly concentrated in the Tacheng area and the Altay area. Incomplete data show that from 2014 to 2017, about 200,000 mu were planted in Fuhai County in Altay Prefecture, about 100,000 mu in Habahe County, and 420,000-600,000 mu were planted in the whole region. Wusu City in Tacheng area is about 68,000 mu, Yumin County is 20,000 mu, Tacheng City, Jinghe County and other places, the planting area of the Ninth Division of the Corps once exceeded 2 million mu more than 10 years ago, accounting for more than 50% of the country. There are about 80,000 mu of melons in Qitai County, Changji Prefecture, about 140,000 mu of cash crops such as melons and gourds in Jimsar County, and melon seeds in Fukang County have also obtained the registration and protection certification of geographical indications of agricultural products, and there are also small areas planted in Shihezi, Korla and other places.
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Beaten melon seeds are rich in nutrition and have few local brands in Xinjiang
After processing, the beaten melon seeds that are placed in people’s hands are turned into leisure snacks such as “beaten melon seeds”, “black melon seeds”, and “purple gold red”. Nutrient-rich melon seeds have been loved by Chinese people since ancient times, but at present, there are still few local melon seed brands in Xinjiang, and the market purchase and processing are mainly wholesale.
It is understood that China is the country with the most melon planting, but also the birthplace of melon, now the melon seed market sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, melon seeds “three-legged”, and in fact, sunflowers and pumpkins are imported products from the Americas, and before that, the Northern Song Dynasty book recorded the existence of “melon seeds”, naturally refers to melon seeds. China’s melon production areas are mainly concentrated in Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu and Xinjiang in the northwest, and Hubei, Anhui and Guangxi also have some planting areas. In recent years, Xinjiang has become the country’s most important production area.
Beaten melon melon is divided into red, yellow, white three colors, can also be eaten, beaten melon seed shell thin kernel fragrant, black melon seeds for its large slices, thin skin, flat plate, thick meat and other characteristics, black and shiny melon seeds can be processed into five-spice, sweet, salty and other flavors, red melon seeds are dark red, crispy and delicious. Beaten melon seeds contain a variety of nutrients, protein and unsaturated fatty acids are extremely rich, but also contain calcium, phosphorus, iron minerals and vitamins A, B2 and other vitamins. According to the “Compendium of Materia Medica”, stir-fried food with melon seeds can “replenish pleasantness, clear the lungs and moisturize the intestines, and quench thirst”.
Despite the abundance of local resources, there are not many well-known brands that produce black melon seeds locally in Xinjiang. According to data from China Brand Network, there is no Xinjiang melon seed in the top ten of China’s top ten melon seed brands. The nationally renowned melon seed brands such as Qiaqia, Zhenglin and Liangpin Shop are marked in a prominent position on the sales pages of online shopping malls such as Tmall and Jingdong as raw materials “produced in Xinjiang”.
Querying Alibaba’s enterprise website, you can see that the local processing of black melon seeds in Xinjiang only has a few brands such as “Tianshan”, “Beiting Tianyuan” and “Xuebai Ren”, most of which are food processing enterprises in Changji Prefecture and Wu City, and the bags of black melon seeds after finishing are about 25-30 yuan / kg. The “silly boss” brand, which was built with abundant resources in the Altay region and quickly became popular, does not currently have a series of melon seed products, and its sales manager said that the current products are mainly sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, and will produce a series of melon seeds in the future.
In Wushi and Altay City, there are enterprises from Tacheng and Altay areas to wholesale melon seeds in large quantities, supplying national buyers and local fried melon seed retail stores, and the wholesale price is usually measured in tons.
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