Rumors that maggot of fruit lies had been found millions of tangerines have left thousands of tonnes of fruit rotting unsold, toppling the whole industry chain across China, according to fruit farmers.

As with many other tangerine farmers, Lin Xuezhen in a remote county in central Hunan Province sighed when staring at her trees.

"The tangerines are definitely going bad on the trees because no one buys," she said.

Her county, named Shimen, one of the famed tangerine producing areas in the province, used to attract more than 3,000 dealers during harvest time.

The province, a major producer of tangerines, expects a direct economic loss of 400 million yuan (about US$60 million) as mountains of tangerines sit in the market without buyers, said the local agricultural bureau.

The case is the same in the neighbouring Hubei Province, where 70 percent of its tangerine harvest remains unsold and farmers look set to take a hit of up to 1.5 billion yuan (US$219 million) if the scare continues, the local agricultural bureau said.

Customers are driven away by fear of finding maggot in the fruits.

"It's disgusting," said Lan Yanghang, 28, who works for a Shanghai-based finance consulting company, "even thinking of squirmy maggot in tangerines."

He saw some pictures on the Internet showing that some tiny white maggots were hiding in the tangerines; after that he stopped eating them.

The panic was blown up by fast spreading rumours in reports and text messages since September 13, saying that all tangerines had been affected in a small county in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The remote county is called Wangcang County of Guangyuan City. The Sichuan provincial government confirmed the existence of the maggots but denied the spreading of the infected tangerines, saying that the county was not one of the major tangerine producing areas in the province and only provided fruits for local customers.

Government officials announced its effort, saying that more than 1,200 tonnes of fruits had been disinfected and buried under ground to prevent further spreading and only 12 tonnes of them were found to have pests in them.

The pests had been contained and the situation is under control, said Mou Jinyi, an engineer of the provincial agriculture department.

However, the panic spread nationwide soon, while fear hit fruit-growing peasants in main producing areas in southern China provinces, which triggered investigation by China's Ministry of Agriculture, which was followed by market saving efforts.

But new cases have broken out in another province.

Guangdong provincial authority said on Wednesday that 15 boxes of tangerines from one batch were confirmed to have maggots and had been destroyed.

More than 250 check points had been established by the agricultural administration to monitor the situation in Guangdong while many other provinces had also built up examination system to guarantee food safety.

Prices have been lowered nationwide. Tangerine wholesalers in Xinfadi, a major fruit wholesale market in Beijing, said they cut the price by half to only 0.5 yuan (about 7 U.S. cents), but orders were few and tonnes of tangerines had already rotted.

"If you all don't eat tangerines this year, what are we going to live on next year?" a farmer from Hunan cried in his blog on sina.com. The article has got more than 36,000 viewers and close to 2,300 comments.

Farmers and associations have been trying to figure out a way to save their industry.

The head of Pujiang County's fruit industry association in Sichuan province, named Chen Weijun, has been crafting a proposal to the government, suggesting the peasants, dealers and the government should share the loss.

"I'm too worried," Chen frowned and said. His county is near the core of the rumour.

More than 1,500 kilograms of tangerines lost buyers in one night after the rumour began.

"It was a big hit. If it continues, the fruit industry here cannot sustain any more," he said.

Other businessmen in northern provinces like Shandong have handed out tangerines for free at a wholesale fruit market in Jinan, capital of Shandong, to win trust. More than eight tonnes have been taken by thousands of customers within two days.

"We would rather give them away as presents than see them going bad," said Guo Jianxing, director of the information department of the market, where many venders lost more than 10,000 yuan (about US$1,470) per day.

"The tangerines even became cheaper than waste paper," he said.

Sympathy has been given by some people to the farmers.

"It's farmers' blood and sweat, and buying their daily necessities largely depends on the income from tangerine sales," said a netizen from southwest China's Chongqing municipality.

"I think most tangerines are still good and safe. We just need to look it over before eating," he said.

Science articles began to appear on the Internet to explain the flies and to persuade the audience to accept the fruit again.

An expert named Wan Fanghao, botanist of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said the snow disaster, which killed the natural enemies of the flies, such as insects and birds, might be the reason for the new boom.

"The flies are of an ordinary type in China and other Asian countries, and they came every year, some times more sometimes less," wan said.

More trust was called on by Wan for the various breeds of tangerines in China.

A science writer named Liu Yang wrote in her article "Flies in Tangerines" that "the fruit flies do no harm to man and it is simply a psychological thing."

"Many of my friends were freaked out but they had to say it was only a little bit disgusting but not harmful," said the 26-year-old biology major, who identified herself as "Tangerine" because it is her favorite fruit.

"I hope we will soon be seen as people started to see the incident from scientific perspectives," she said.

(Xinhua News Agency November 1, 2008)