The south wind in spring brings warmth, the wheat is already as high as the waist, and the mulberry fields are becoming rich.In the middle and late May of each year, signboards with words like"mulberry picking garden","fruit wine" and"fresh mulberry" can be seen everywhere along the old Yellow River in Xiajin. Entering the picking garden, a large, fleshy, purplish red mulberry attracts tourists' attention, and every small particle on the mulberry explodes on the tip of the tongue, sour and sweet.
"The roots of underground mulberry trees are coiled together, and some even grow to 9 meters."With the introduction of the guide, the tourists not only learned about the characteristics of mulberry trees, but also learned about the history of mulberry trees taking root in Xiajin.
In the long history, the constantly changing Yellow River channel flows through Xiajin twice, causing six floods and breaches, leaving a 300 thousand mu of rolling sand dunes, where sandstorms are raging and people are struggling.In the process of local people's long-term struggle against sandstorms, mulberry has become an important tree species for wind prevention, sand fixation and soil conservation due to its vigorous vitality and well-developed roots.More than 300 years ago, Zhu Guoxiang, the magistrate of Xiajin during the reign of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, saw that"the land is half beach, not suitable for crops". So the local people were guided to"plant a variety of fruit trees, so that the people could avoid the storm and earn money". Since then, the planting of fruit mulberry in Xiajin reached a climax. More than 100 years ago, the planting area of fruit mulberry in Xiajin has reached 80000 mu, which has greatly improved the local microclimate and water and soil environment.
In recent years, in order to protect this heritage, Xiajin has formulated a plan for the protection and development of ancient mulberry trees, promoted the standardized planting of mulberry trees, built a forest park along the old Yellow River, excavated the agricultural mulberry culture accumulated for thousands of years, and improved the cultural connotation.The ancient mulberry forest has experienced natural and man-made disasters, wars and famines. Although it has experienced several disasters, it still has more than 6000 mu, including more than 20000 ancient mulberry trees over 100 years old. The largest ancient mulberry tree group in China still remains here.
Now, after thousands of years of utilization and breeding, ancient mulberry trees along the old Yellow River in Xiajin have produced multiple values in sand prevention and control, biodiversity protection, biological resource utilization, agricultural landscape maintenance, etc. It was included in the list of important global agricultural cultural heritage projects by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in April 2018. It is the first important global agricultural cultural heritage in Shandong Province and the only important mulberry agricultural cultural heritage in the world.The"hometown of fruit" has become one of the bright business cards of Xiajin County, and the mulberry industry has become a characteristic industry to bring people to wealth.
After the development in recent years, Xiajin has 30 mulberry industry enterprises, more than 20 fruit deep processing enterprises, and 60 farmers' professional cooperatives and processing workshops. Xiajin has developed a complete mulberry industry chain integrating mulberry planting, mulberry product processing, mulberry culture experience, eco-tourism and health care for the elderly. The annual output value of comprehensive development of mulberry industry has reached 1 billion yuan.（Reporter Deng Meiping Wang Xiaoqian）
