About Zhengzhou Fruit Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences

Zhengzhou Fruit Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences

The Zhengzhou Fruit Research Institute (ZFRI) is the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) institute for fruit research, based in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. The National Grape Germplasm Resource Nursery at the institute records that the institute was established in 1960. ZFRI conducts the national academy's research on fruit crops — fruit germplasm resources, breeding and cultivation — covering tree fruits, berries and the cucurbit fruits watermelon and melon, in which it holds a particularly strong national position. It is listed by the CAAS Graduate School among the academy's institutes outside Beijing and maintains its own English-language website.

The institute works at Zhengzhou (around 34°43′ north, 113°39′ east in the nursery's published description), in the Central Plains region where north and south Chinese fruit production meet. Its germplasm nurseries, breeding teams and quality and safety laboratories make it a comprehensive fruit research centre rather than a single-crop station.

Germplasm resources

Germplasm conservation is a foundation of the institute's work. It hosts the National Grape Germplasm Resource Nursery of China, whose collections have been used in published studies of grape cultivars, including phenolic compound profiles in the skins of wine and table grapes grown in the nursery. A later study of grape texture used 437 grape accessions harvested at the institute, at a nursery described with an annual average temperature of 14.2 °C, annual rainfall of 666.0 mm, 2,436 hours of sunshine and a 213-day frost-free period, on brown sandy loam soil. Collections on this scale underpin the institute's breeding programmes: breeders draw parents from characterised accessions, and the nursery's long-term records of cultivar performance in Zhengzhou conditions inform variety recommendations for central China.

Research teams

The institute organises its science in innovation teams that map its crop coverage: the Innovation Team of Peach Germplasm Resources and Improvement; the Innovation Team of High Value Fruits Genetic Resources and Improvement; the Innovation Team of Melon Breeding and Cultivation; the Innovation Team of Watermelon Breeding and Cultivation; the Innovation Team of Fruit Nutrition and Function; the Innovation Team of Monitoring and Control Technology of Fruit Quality and Safety; and the Innovation Team of Apple Germplasm Resources and Breeding. Together the teams span the institute's three working modes: collecting and improving germplasm, breeding and cultivation of commercial crops, and the nutrition, function and safety science that supports fruit quality.

Watermelon and melon research

Watermelon and melon are signature crops for ZFRI. Its watermelon and melon resources team, integrating multi-omics analyses, revealed a "two-switch" genetic model formed by two major causative loci that explains the formation of the four main flesh colours in different watermelon accessions, published in Molecular Horticulture. Its watermelon genetic breeding and cultivation team, with the Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, identified the allelic relationship and translocation region among chromosomal translocation lines that produce less-seed watermelon, developed molecular markers for detecting the translocation chromosomes and applied them in breeding practice — work published in Horticulture Research that opens a route to seedless or less-seed watermelons through chromosome translocation rather than ploidy manipulation. The institute also assembled, with China Agricultural University, the first telomere-to-telomere genome of semi-wild melon. Its award records include breeding and application of the Cui Li watermelon variety with high quality and disease resistance, and green and efficient cultivation technology for watermelon.

Peach, apple and other tree fruits

In peach, the institute's breeding team identified the gene PpTHE1, a cell wall integrity sensor regulating the increased duration of the harvest window in slow-melting flesh peach, through the assembly of a chromosome-level reference genome of Prunus persica, published in Plant Biotechnology Journal; extending the harvest window is commercially valuable because it lengthens the period over which fruit can be picked at eating quality. In the hardy kiwifruit Actinidia arguta, institute researchers combined 3D chromatin architecture and omics analysis to explain anthocyanin regulation of fruit skin colour, published in Horticulture Research. In apple, the institute is credited in breeding literature with the cultivars Huaguan (Golden Delicious × Fuji, 1988) and Huashuai (Fuji × Starkrimson, 1988), and its award records include cultivation and demonstration of the early-maturing apple cultivar Huashuo. Its walnut work, begun in 1965, pioneered the cultivation in China of short-branched, early-yielding walnut varieties, with supporting rootstock introduction and fast propagation technology; the 'Zhongheduanzhi' and 'Jizaofeng' walnut varieties appear in its award list.

Pomegranate and featured fruits

The institute's pomegranate programme illustrates its full-chain approach. After twenty years of exploration and research, its team reported breakthroughs in the theoretical innovation of pomegranate genetic breeding, germplasm creation, new variety cultivation and integrated research on green quality improvement and efficiency enhancement technology, realising industrialisation of soft-seed pomegranate — integrating variety, agricultural machinery and agronomy, and production ecology — recognised by a Second Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress in Henan Province in 2021. Breeding and industrial application of the soft-seed pomegranate series of featured new varieties heads its recent award list, alongside research and application of key technologies for urban characteristic fruits such as grapes.

Fruit quality and safety

The institute's quality and safety programme addresses the monitoring, evaluation and control of fruit safety across production. In a project recognised in Henan Province in 2018, its team responded to problems of insufficient detection methods, imperfect monitoring systems, unclear background of key hazard factors and lack of whole-process standardised control technology in Chinese fruit quality and safety monitoring. The team developed and validated methods for the analysis of 131 pesticides, thirty recessive components in pesticide products, organic acids, pectin and volatile components in fruit products, including a new method for detecting glyphosate and its metabolite in peach fruits, leaves and soil. It established a high-throughput detection system for 131 pesticide risk factors, identified 34 major hazard factors — 33 pesticides and one heavy metal — assessed dietary exposure risk across six types of fruit for pesticides and four for heavy metals, proposed recommended maximum residue limits for 84 pesticides in fruits, evaluated 37 main nutritional functional components of grapes and apples under different production methods and ecological regions, and established safety production technical regulations for main tree species. The work provided scientific and technological support for ensuring the edible safety of fruit.

International cooperation

ZFRI cooperates internationally, notably with Pakistan on melon and fruit technology. An international scientific and technological cooperation agreement and memorandum were signed in 2017 with Faisalabad Agricultural University, and the Henan Joint International Research Laboratory of South Asian Fruits and Cucurbits was established in 2018. In March 2019 Professor Aman Ullah Malik visited the institute at the invitation of Professor Liu Wenge, touring the demonstration base of the cucurbits germplasm improvement research centre and greenhouse watermelon and melon cultivation, and agreeing with institute leaders including deputy director Dr Wang Lirong on a scientific exchange conference in Pakistan, a training course on fruit trees and cucurbits, the supply of six excellent watermelon and melon varieties and the establishment of a new variety demonstration base in Pakistan.

Research standing and regional role

The institute is tracked by the Nature Index as a CAAS institute, recording fourteen counted papers in the 2025 calendar window, predominantly in biological sciences. Its teams also work in the CAAS Xinxiang comprehensive experimental base system in Henan, where the institute is among the CAAS institutes with test bases serving variety demonstration and farmer advice; accounts of that work describe growers bringing diseased cherry planting problems to the institute's experts at the base. From its 1960 founding, ZFRI has become the national academy's comprehensive fruit institute: guardian of national grape germplasm, a leader in watermelon and melon genetics, and a source of varieties — from Huaguan apples to soft-seed pomegranates — grown across China.