The biggest goji producing area in China is Ningxia autonomous region, where Lycium barbarum is grown at commercial scale. Ningxia developed cultivars such as ‘Ningqi No.1’… ‘No.7’, ‘No.9’, ‘No.10’, so on… are supposed to be very good.
I don’t know the detailed history of where commonly available Lycium varieties in the West (Europe and USA) originated from. I am talking about cultivar names such as ‘Big Lifeberry’, ‘New Big’, ‘Sweet Lifeberry’, ‘No.1 Lifeberry’, and so forth. I know many come from US patents but my feeling is that many of these are either renamed Chinese varieties or are direct descendants of them. Either way, the lifeberry series get low scores online. I even saw USU say ‘Crimson Star’ is the same as ‘Ningqi No.1’. I do not know the veracity of that.
Does anyone know of genuinely good varieties? Just ‘Crimson Star’? That’s the only cultivar I see with good reviews.
I myself am growing ‘Princess Tao’, a French cultivar bred by a defunct company that seems to be connected to Wang Wencai, a deceased half blind near-centenarian communist Chinese taxonomist… Or it may be another Wang Wencai. He was the only one who I can find.
I have not tasted the fruit. I have heard relatively good things about it. Honestly I think that future cultivars of goji will continue to improve on fruit size, sweetness, and reduced bitterness. It will follow the trajectory of our other berries: bigger, sweeter, less acid.
I recently trialled two new blackcurrants that are much richer in sugars and easy to snack on like a grape. No need to make a juice or jam in order to be palatable. They are deliciously sweet fresh!
The bad side is that these breeding efforts sacrifice the nutritional quality of the fruit considerably. We can look at the nutritional and antioxidant content of wild vs cultivated blueberries, apples vs crabs, and so forth.
So I do think there is a place for growing goji. I think it is a healthy fruit in as much as a wild tomato the size of a blueberry is as nutrient packed as a cultivated beefsteak.