Light and fluffy and large Souffle freshwater pearls from China are the latest freshwater pearls being cultivated today. The Chinese freshwater culture pearls story...
Cultured freshwater pearls started during the 1930s in JAPAN when Fujita of Japan discovered that implanting mantle tissue alone into the mantle of host mussel could initiate pearl growth. This led to pearl culturing Biwa pearl in the mid 1960s on Lake Biwa, Japan's largest freshwater lake. The grafting technique used to produce Biwa Pearls was simple. Unfortunately within the last 10 years, pollution, overfishing has virtually wiped out pearl culture on Lake Biwa.
As a result China has replaced Japan as the world's producer of freshwater flesh nucleated cultured pearls. The Chinese began to cultivate freshwater pearls in response to the rapid decline of the japanese industry. At present China produces freshwater pearls based on spat culture to produce its stock mussels that have an amazing range of exotic shapes and colors.
These freshwater pearls are being cultured along the Chang Jiang (Yangstse River), in the lake and pond areas of Zhejiang and Jiangsu Provinces in particular, and also in Anhui, Hubei, Jiangxi, and Hunan Provinces to the west and Fujian Province to the south.
While Zhejian Province remains China's major production base for freshwater cultured pearls, deteriorating farming conditions has led to the replacement of Anhai and Hubei Provinces on the northern banks of the Yangtse River by Jiangx and the Hunan Provinces that lie on the opposite bank of the river.
Chinese mantle grafted pearls are produced by simple Biwa technology.
