Jilin, the largest province of ginseng in China, launches new policy to promote “source security”

On October 18, at a press conference in Changchun, Li Deming, the head of the Jilin Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, emphasized the importance of ginseng to Chinese culture. He announced that Jilin will establish a protection system for ginseng’s original habitat and traditional gene pools to ensure the security of ginseng resources and support the development of the ginseng industry.

This announcement came during the fifth session of the 12th Jilin Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, where officials outlined the province’s development goals and priorities for the coming years. A key focus will be on establishing a mechanism for the high-quality development of the ginseng industry.

Jilin is China’s leading province in ginseng production, with a cultivation area of 145,000 acres for garden ginseng and 1.165 million acres for wild ginseng, yielding a total output that has now surpassed 70 billion yuan in overall industry value.

Li described plans to enhance the standardized cultivation system for ginseng, with a strong emphasis on ensuring seed security. This includes the creation of a ginseng gene resource library, the development and promotion of proprietary ginseng varieties, and the implementation of a dynamic management mechanism for suitable planting areas. The province will also introduce a system for grower registration and promote comprehensive standardized planting practices.

Furthermore, Li highlighted the initiative to implement a traceability system, where each wild and garden ginseng will have a unique code for complete tracking. The focus on high-quality development in the ginseng industry will prioritize authenticity and the establishment of norms for quality management and credit evaluation.

Additionally, the conference announced plans to accelerate the transformation of intelligent identification for ginseng. Recently, the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics and Changchun University of Traditional Chinese Medicine unveiled a new intelligent grading system that can determine the origin, age, and quality of ginseng, eliminating the mystery surrounding ginseng age.

Li also mentioned plans to invite experts such as Academicians Zhang Boli and Li Yu from the Chinese Academy of Engineering to act as chief advisors and develop a specialized plan for the high-quality development of the ginseng industry, aiming to expand the entire industry’s scale to 300 billion yuan over the next five years.