After years of experimenting, Bắc Giang has finally succeeded in growing seedless lychees.

According to Báo Bắc Giang, at the end of 2019, the province’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) introduced 500 seedlings of seedless lychees to cultivate. Some of those trees have now finally borne fruit, which still holds the signature juicy sweetness but without the inconvenience of a pit.

Lê Bá Thành, the department's deputy director, told local media that, as this is the first year the lychee trees have fruited, the yield is quite low. The province plans to use most of them for quality assessment research and as gifts. Only in 2023 will the rare variety be available widely in the market as a commercial product. 

Vi Văn Hiệu, one of the few farmers in the province who successfully cultivate seedless lychees, told Tổ Quốc that he had to go three years with no harvests and that this season's bounty was a surprise. Hiệu has four seedless lychee trees which can yield about 100 kilograms of fruit. He could sell these at VND100,000 per kilo, which is more than triple the regular price, and still not have enough for the surge in demand.

Following this initial success, Bắc Giang’s DARD plan to spread this cultivar to the whole province. Bắc Giang is one of Vietnam's major lychee producers, with more than 28,000 hectares dedicated to the fruit. Currently, besides local consumption, the province's famous vải thiều Lục Ngạn cultivar is exported to many international markets including China, Japan, the European Union, South Korea, Australia, and more.

[Photo by Đinh Huy via Tổ Quốc]