Thousands of visitors go to Qinglongzui Garden to pick ripenavel oranges on November 8th. (Photo taken by Huang Xiang, a full media reporter and photographer from Three Gorges Daily)

　　According to the Yichang Agricultural and Rural Bureau, 1,700,000 tons of citrus have already been sold until November 12，accounting for a half of estimated total annual output (3, 696,600 tons). At present, the main selling variety is Satsuma orange. In addition, certain kinds of pomelos, hybrid citrus and medium ripe Satsuma oranges are also being sold.

　　Wen Zhonghua, director of the Citrus Selling Office tells us that this year the Yichang government has set up 6,000-mu(about 2,428 hectares)Citrus Variety Improvements Demonstration Bases,which have played an exemplaryrole in optimizingthevariety structure and qualityof the Citrus. Affected by COVID-19, a number of farmers, who use to leave theirhometownand work as migrant workers,have to stay athomethis year.As a result, they have got more time to take good care of the orchards, including pruning fruit plants in a more careful manner.At the same time, compared with the previous years, they have used more organic fertilizersand done a better job in preventing and controlling the diseases. Besides, with abundance of rainwater irrigation, the quality of Yichang citrus is apparentlybetter than previous years and has an advantage over other producing areas.

　　Yichang government spares no efforts to build its own citrus brand. When it comes to the processing, wax factories and cooperative communities have attached great importance to the quality of fruit harvesting. To achieve the best results, they have organized the special team who are well-trained to pick, transport and sort out the citrus. Meanwhile, strict standards of purchase and sales have been worked out for keeping the fruit in natural state and mature flavor without artificial ripening and degreening.

　　Recently, the Satsuma orange has been listed in succession across the country. Affected by multiple factors, such as blocked exports, more rainy days and crowded sales, the price is lower than before. Yichang government mobilized the wax factories to make full use of fine weather days, selling it in fresh stage, deepening process and increasing its storage for avoiding the peak season. What’s more, distributors have been encouraged to go to the second-and-third-tier urban markets, county-level markets, rural markets and surrounding markets as well as maintaining its intracity market.

　　Although the main export markets of citrus have been blocked by Russia, marketing enterprises are actively finding new markets. So far, Yichang Citrus have been exported to nine countries, including Canada, the Philippines and many others. New markets such as Saud Arabia, Ukraine have also been established. Compared with last year, Yichang has already soldabout 230,000 tons of citrus, outpacing 210,000 tons last year.

　　Combining online-and-offline marketing, citrus sales markets havebeen greatly expanded. This year, various citrus sales enterprises in Yichang summed up the successful experience of online sales, fully utilizedsome shopping platform apps, such as PDD (Pinduoduo), JD and Taobao to develop online sales. For example, Zhijiang Juyuan Ganju Professional Cooperative sells about 30,000 orders everyday by operating PDD e-commerce shop and Douyin app, ranking among Top 3 citrus sales platforms of PDD; Yufuyuan, another citrus selling enterprise which has its own farm, has become one of the first signing supplier of 42 farms on the mini program named Baba Farm of Taobao, selling 60 to 100 tons of goods every day.