Shaanxi

How apples came

Apples grew in Shaanxi centuries before the modern industry. The historian Zhang Fan found that a new kind of soft apple reached China’s heartland from the Western Regions late in the Yuan dynasty and that Shaanxi seems to have grown it by the end of the Ming. The province’s gazetteer of the Yongzheng reign records its fate: when the rebel Li Zicheng came through the pass, “he demanded so many that the people, sorely burdened, vied to fell their trees, and the kind almost died out” (translated)¹.

The modern industry has a precise start. In 1940 the Shaan-Gan-Ning border region’s academy of natural sciences tried Western apple saplings at the Guanghua farm at Yan’an, and in 1947 Li Xin’an, a farmer of Asi village in Luochuan county, brought 200 saplings home by donkey from Lingbao in Henan². He planted his own 6.7 mu (about 0.45 ha), Luochuan’s first orchard, while neighbours who did not know apple trees asked whether such “dry sticks” could feed anyone (translated). In 1953 it bore more than 2,500 kg, and more than fifty villages followed with 17,000 mu (about 1,130 ha). In 1974 Luochuan made its first export, 33,720 jin of apples to Hong Kong. Li Xin’an died in 1983, and Asi has been made over as China’s first apple village³.

Breeding gave the province apples of its own. In the planned crossing begun in the 1950s, the Shaanxi fruit research institute bred Qinguan, one of the new Chinese varieties of wide influence⁴. Qinguan resists Marssonina leaf blotch, to which Fuji is highly susceptible, and breeders from Northwest A&F University crossed the two in a farmer’s orchard in Liquan county: seed gathered in 2004 gave the seedling chosen in 2009 and released in 2015 as Ruiyang⁵. Ruixue and Ruixianghong came from the university’s station at Baishui, the latter approved nationally in July 2022⁶, and Ma Fengwang’s group crossed a Fuji strain with Honeycrisp to make Qincui, now planted on nearly 400,000 mu across China⁷.

The centre of China’s apple growing has moved west. The Loess Plateau grew 10.63% of the country’s apples in 1978 and 44.37% in 2016; Shaanxi’s share rose from 4.36% to 25.08%, and since 2009 it has grown more than Shandong, as rising labour costs in the industrialising east pushed the crop inland⁸. In 2008 the province began to move its apple belt north and west, into the northern counties of Yan’an⁹.

How they’re grown

Shaanxi’s traditional apple country is the Weibei, the loess uplands north of the Wei river⁷. Luochuan, at the centre of the plateau’s apple region, averages 1,072 m above sea level, with about 600 mm of rain, a mean temperature of 9.2 °C and 167 frost-free days; its loess can be more than 100 m deep, and most of its orchards are never irrigated. Peng and colleagues call the Loess Plateau “the world’s largest apple-producing region”, with more than 80% of its orchards relying on rain alone¹⁰. Baishui, where the plateau meets the Guanzhong plain, is cool, dry and sunny, its orchards at about 1,000 m⁶.

The orchards are being rebuilt. Shaanxi promotes dwarf, dense plantings, which double the old yields of 30–37.5 tonnes a hectare to 60–75 tonnes and cut labour costs, the industry’s most pressing problem¹¹. At Asi the new orchards have fertigation, hail nets and rows wide enough for sprayers and tillers². Fruit bagging, brought from Japan in 1981, became routine in China’s main apple regions after the end of the twentieth century, although bagged fruit suffers more bitter pit and black spot and costs have risen⁴. Luochuan’s trees still hung with bagged apples in August 2025², but a grower at Chengcheng has moved to bag-free Ruixue and Luli, saving 3,000 yuan a mu on bags⁷.

The climate is moving the belt. Comparing 1961–1990 with 1991–2020, Shaanxi’s meteorologists found that the zone suited to apples had shifted about 110 km north and 80 km west and climbed onto sunny slopes at about 730–1,660 m between Wuqi and Jiaxian. Yulin, in the far north, had 1.16 million mu (about 77,300 ha) of apples in 2025, 12% of the province’s apple area⁹ and more than three times its area of twenty years before⁷.

What’s picked

Shaanxi grew 15.214 million tonnes of apples in 2025, 4.9% more than in 2024¹²: about one in four of China’s apples, and by one reckoning one in seven of those eaten worldwide¹³. Luochuan alone has more than 35,000 ha (530,000 mu) of orchards^13,2; it picked about 1.12 million tonnes in 2024, and some 95% of its farming households grow and sell apples². Baishui has more than 550,000 mu (about 36,700 ha) and averages 600,000 tonnes a year; apples bring in 80% of its farmers’ income⁶.

The picking runs from July to October. Qinyang, an early variety from Northwest A&F University, begins to ripen in mid-July in southern Shaanxi’s loess country, two weeks before Gala¹⁴. Luochuan’s early apples, Huashuo, Luli and Gala among them, are picked at the turn of August and September¹⁵, and Fuji, the county’s main variety, from the end of September into mid- or late October, with Qincui and Ruixue¹⁶. Fuji gives about 70% of China’s apples¹¹, but Shaanxi’s own early and mid-season varieties are taking a growing share of the land from late Fuji types⁷.

Luochuan’s growers store most of the crop in controlled-atmosphere rooms to sell through the winter¹⁶. Shaanxi’s apples, from an “excellent growing area”, fetch more than Shandong’s from a “suitable” one, and bagged fruit, being prettier, more than unbagged¹¹. In June 2026 the first refrigerated train of Luochuan apples left Huangling for Kathmandu, and Yan’an exported 3,196.8 tonnes in the first half of the year¹⁶.

On the table

Most of China’s apples are eaten fresh; of those processed, more than 95% become juice and the rest cider, vinegar, preserved apples and dried chips¹¹. Luochuan’s factories make juice, vinegar and dried apple slices¹⁶, and the county has campaigned for apples clean enough to eat with the skin on, controlling the fertilisers and sprays used in its orchards and giving the fruit codes that buyers can trace³. Its apples have gone into space as astronauts’ food².

The Chinese word for apple, 苹果 (píngguǒ), is short for an older name that came through Buddhist texts from Sanskrit^1,17.

Notes

• Li Xin’an’s first orchard was under half a hectare; Luochuan now has more than 35,000 ha^3,13.
• Qinguan resists Marssonina leaf blotch, to which Fuji is highly susceptible; their cross gave Ruiyang⁵.
• Luochuan’s orchards are mostly rainfed, on loess that can be more than 100 m deep¹⁰.

Where the sources disagree

• The 2025 crop. The USDA’s Beijing office expected drought to cut Shaanxi’s yields by roughly 5% in 2025/26¹¹; the provincial bulletin reports a rise of 4.9%¹².
• The first trees. Apples grew here by the late Ming¹ and Western saplings were tried at Yan’an in 1940²; 1947 marks Luochuan’s industry, not the province’s first apples.
• Qinguan’s dates. Popular accounts give 1957 for the cross and 1970 for the name; they are unverified, so only Wang’s 1950s programme is given⁴.
• Elevation. 1,072 m is Luochuan’s county average¹⁰ and Baishui’s 1,000 m a promotional figure⁶; no altitude range for the Weibei orchards as a whole was found.
• The calendar is pieced together from a variety paper for July¹⁴ and county reports for August to October^15,16.
• Left out. The often-repeated claim that the FAO has named Yan’an or Luochuan among the world’s best apple zones (no FAO document was found), and a figure above 1.2 million ha for the Weibei’s orchards¹⁰, far beyond what Yulin’s 12% share implies for the province⁹.