Goji Berries might be better known as the wolfberry, whose plant is distinctly related to tobacco, chili pepper, deadly nightshade, eggplant, tomato, and the potato plants. The US Department of Agriculture Germplasm Resources Information Network also classifies Goji Berries as the plants known as matrimony vine, Duke of Argylls tea tree, cambronera, bocksdorn, Barbary matrimony vine, and the Chinese wolfberry.
Goji Berries are getting much acclaim lately for being health food products, usually marketed as either Himalayan goji or Tibetan goji. One source indicates that Goji Berries have been a mainstay of Traditional Chinese Medicine for around 1,900 years already. According to Chinese legend, Goji Berries were also used by Shen Nung who is believed to have been the First Emperor of China. Goji Berries are now considered a health food because research has shown that it has antioxidants and nutrients aplenty, which may explain why Goji Berries are also now classified as one of the superfruits. Demand for superfruits like Goji Berries is expected to reach the billion-dollar mark by year 2011.
The Goji Berries you may be familiar with are usually of an ellipsoidal shape and bright red, with each of the Goji Berries filled with up to sixty seeds. Goji Berries that are planted in countries in the Northern Hemisphere may ripen in the months of July, August, September and October.
People who were raised as Chinese or Oriental may prefer to call these berries Goji Berries while Western folk may know the berries better as the Wolf Berry or wolfberries. The reason they are named Goji Berries may be because the wolfberries are dubbed Gouqui in the Mandarin Chinese tongue. Despite the relationship in names, some experts believe that Goji Berries were actually cultivated outside China at the start before being brought in to the country.
Nowadays, Goji Berries are planted in commercial quantities in north central China (in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region) and in western China (in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.) The size of a typical plantation of Goji Berries can start at 100 acres and extend to up to 1000 acres in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Ningxia has been found to produce some of the top Goji Berries variety which are sometimes called the red diamonds commercial variety. Ningxia produces very good Goji Berries because this is the area where the Yellow River floodplains exist. In 2001, 13 million kilograms of Goji Berries were harvested in the Ningxia Region alone, which was equivalent to 42% of the overall yield of China for that year.
One problem though with Goji Berries harvested abroad is that they may contain residue of the organochlorine pesticides which are sprayed on the plants to prevent insects from destroying the very delicate berries. This is true regardless of whether the Goji Berries were grown in Tibet or China or any other Asian country. This is why it is very important that Goji Berries food supplement processors be honest about informing the public as to where their Goji Berries were grown and how they were treated before being processed into food supplements.
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February 19, 2011 
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