Min County Dong Quai National Demonstration Zone for Export Food

Min County Dong Quai National Demonstration Zone for Export Food and Agricultural Product Quality and Safety，Globally renowned as the Hometown of Dong Quai in China, Min County of Gansu Province is the authentic Daodi origin of high-quality Dong Quai (Angelica sinensis), traditionally known as Min Gui. With more than 1,800 years of herbal planting heritage and a nationally recognized agricultural heritage farming system, Min County has long been regarded as the most suitable terroir for growing premium Dong Quai worldwide. To further standardize industrial development and eliminate international trade technical barriers, Min County was officially awarded the title of National Export Food and Agricultural Product Quality Safety Demonstration Zone, building a standardized, traceable, and internationally certified quality system for Gansu authentic Dong Quai exports.

As a core certification for China’s agricultural product foreign trade, the National Export Quality Safety Demonstration Zone represents the highest national standard for planting management, quality control, residue safety, and industrial normalization. Before the establishment of the demonstration zone, although Min County Dong Quai possessed unique alpine terroir advantages and superior medicinal properties, scattered traditional planting led to unstable batch quality, inconsistent field management, and insufficient international market credibility, limiting its long-term global layout. After the official authorization of the national demonstration zone, Min County comprehensively upgraded the whole-industry-chain standardization system, covering seedling breeding, ecological cultivation, field supervision, harvesting and processing, laboratory testing, warehousing and cross-border logistics.

At the source of cultivation, the demonstration zone unifies standardized planting specifications based on local Daodi Chinese Herb Planting Base, GAP Chinese Medicinal Herb Base and professional seedling breeding bases. It strictly promotes improved Min Gui varieties from MinGui No.1 to No.6, implements scientific alpine crop rotation systems, and eliminates continuous cropping degradation risks. All planting areas adopt green ecological management, strictly control chemical fertilizers, prohibited pesticides and growth regulators, and adhere to a complete three-year natural growth cycle. This standardized planting mode fully retains the high ferulic acid and volatile oil characteristics of authentic Min Gui, ensuring every batch of export-grade Dong Quai meets international safety thresholds.

In terms of quality supervision and inspection, the demonstration zone builds a complete safety testing system supported by CMA and CNAS accredited laboratories. It conducts full-item detection of active ingredients, heavy metals, pesticide residues and sulfur dioxide residues. All test reports are internationally recognized, fully complying with the strict import standards of Europe, North America, Southeast Asia and other global markets. Meanwhile, the whole-process QR traceability system is fully implemented, realizing traceability from seedling sources, field planting archives, quality inspection reports to finished product processing and export customs clearance, effectively solving the global market’s core concerns about medicinal material safety and origin authenticity.

Backed by the national export demonstration zone qualification, Min County Dong Quai has achieved standardized production, unified quality standards and streamlined customs clearance procedures. It greatly reduces international trade costs and technical barriers, and significantly improves global market competitiveness. Combined with multiple authoritative certifications including China-EU Geographical Indication Mutual Recognition, National Geographical Indication Protection and National Important Agricultural Heritage System, Min Gui has formed a multi-dimensional international brand certification matrix.

Today, Min County export-grade Dong Quai is widely exported to more than 20 countries and regions including Europe, America, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia, becoming the preferred Daodi medicinal material source for global TCM enterprises, health care brands and herbal processing factories. The National Export Quality Safety Demonstration Zone not only consolidates Min County’s status as the core global planting base for high-quality Dong Quai, but also empowers traditional Chinese Daodi herbs to move toward standardized, internationalized and high-value industrial development.