During the golden autumn season, orchards are filled with fragrant fruit. Right now, the late-season mangoes in Zhenyuan County have entered their peak harvesting period. Heavy mangoes, still wrapped in their protective bags, hang densely from the branches while farmers work busily picking, sorting, and loading them into baskets. Buyers from outside the region wait at the fields to load trucks in an orderly fashion, painting a lively picture of a bountiful harvest.
As a signature high-value industry in Zhenyuan's tropical zone, the late-season mango's advantage of hitting the market off-cycle has become increasingly prominent, turning it into a "sweet industry" that steadily boosts local incomes. Walking into the 5-mu mango orchard of farmer Li Xuebing in Minjiang Village, the trees stand lush and vigorous, with plump, oversized mangoes nestled among the green leaves, each wrapped in specialized protective bags. This bagging technique not only reduces pest damage but also shields the fruit from sun and rain, preserving its appearance and quality. In the orchard, he and his family are busy picking and sorting while out-of-town buyers wait on-site to load the freshly harvested fruit and ship it out immediately.
"All my mangoes are grown with bagging management, and this year's growth has been pretty good. Outside buyers have come back to my orchard for three years straight, paying 2 yuan per kilogram. This year I sold over 3 tons—they really value the quality of our fruit here," said Li Xuebing, a villager from Minjiang Village in Enle Town, as he picked and introduced his harvest.
The late-season mango industry in Zhenyuan County is off to a strong start. Between 2015 and 2020, the county promoted large-scale, concentrated cultivation of late-season mangoes, adding a cumulative 15,000 mu of new planting area and laying a solid foundation for the growth of specialty fruit forestry. Through guidance for farmers and the adoption of practical techniques such as bagging, scientific fruit thinning, and water-fertilizer management, the industry has continued to expand. By the end of 2025, the county's late-season mango planting area had reached 18,500 mu, marking significant progress in industrial development.
Leveraging its exceptional sunlight, heat, water, and soil resources, Zhenyuan's late-season mangoes enjoy a distinct off-peak market advantage. They ripen and hit the market in batches from late August to the end of November, effectively avoiding the peak season of major mango-producing areas across the province. Currently, the county's annual output of late-season mangoes stands at 40,000 tons, with an industrial value approaching 100 million yuan, truly converting the advantages of tropical resources into industrial and economic strengths.