China Agriculture news, info, updates

[JSCh]

China Focus: Driverless tractors, farmerless farms: China explores precision agriculture
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-28 13:51:19|Editor: Li Xia

BEIJING, March 28 (Xinhua) -- "Sometimes, I just sit here, scrolling through my phone, playing a game or making calls."

Jiang Liqing is not an office slacker, but an experienced tractor driver at Xinhu Farm in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Tractor engines still hum steadily, but the introduction of self-driving vehicles has changed the way Jiang works.

Unlike city roads, the wide croplands of Xinjiang have no white or yellow lines to keep tractor drivers in check. To keep a straight path, Jiang once spent up to 40 minutes marking out an 800-meter-long field before starting.

Self-driving tractors only need two marks and Jiang does them on a motorbike in five minutes. With a few taps on the control screen, the tractor eases into motion while Jiang sits back in the cabin, checking his phone.

From northwestern Xinjiang to Jiansanjiang, a major grain growing base in northeastern Heilongjiang Province, to an automated farm in Xinghua, eastern Jiangsu Province, China is exploring precision agriculture, a new way of farming that might one day lead to no farmers.

As more people move to the cities, getting skilled labor is a major challenge in agriculture. The Global Harvest Initiative in the United States estimated that from 2005 to 2019, the agriculture workforce fell by 58 million people or 11 percent.

Meanwhile, severe weather caused by climate change is expected to affect crop yields. How to feed the growing population with fewer workers while adapting to changing weather? Precision agriculture is emerging as the answer.

Shen Jun, chief scientist at Beijing Unistrong Science & Technology Cooperation, said precision agriculture applies technologies like global satellite navigation systems, remote sensing and automatic control systems over the whole farming process.

The deployment of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), the Gaofen remote sensing satellites and 5G networks enables China to leverage precision agriculture technologies.

In Xinjiang, for instance, the best time for spring planting usually lasts 10 days. An experienced tractor driver can plough, fertilize and sow about 133 hectares in this time. With a self-driving tractor, that goes up to about 200 hectares.

Using BDS, the self-driving system developed by Unistrong is accurate to within 2.5 cm, raising the ground utilization rate by 3 percent. "It sounds small, but for large farms in Xinjiang, it adds up to a lot," said Nan Shunxian, general manager of the Precision Agriculture Center at Unistrong.

Last week, two Earth observation satellites of China's Gaofen project were put into service after completing in-orbit tests. Gaofen-6, launched in June last year, can provide data on agricultural disasters and estimate crop yields.

Sensors and drones generate and collect data like soil moisture, pests and weeds. The high-speed connectivity of 5G enables farm machines to communicate with each other and operate in real-time, so operators can respond to emergencies quickly.

Shen said self-driving tractors and combines still need people to supervise. In the next stage, a drone will first make a detailed survey of the fields. Then an operator can plan and adjust paths, and even manage multiple tractors running at the same time around the clock.

With all that data, farmers in the future will need less expertise and experience, said Shen. They will be operators and managers. All the work will be automated with the best plans designed by artificial intelligence.

Last June, self-driving machines completed the largest farm automation trial in China so far with a rice crop on a farm in Xinghua.

The Telematics Industry Application Alliance (TIAA) was a major organizer of the trial. Pang Chunlin, secretary-general of the group, said one of the major goals this year is to achieve 24-hour operations on the Xinghua farm.

TIAA and its partners will launch another two trials in Heilongjiang and Chongqing, in order to get more experience of automated farming on different terrain and soil types.

In the last harvest season, the trial in Xinghua had its first setback. The soil was seriously compacted after several rainy days, which made it difficult for the self-driving tractors to move. "The tractors just stubbornly tried harder and several engines broke down," said Pang.

Such frustration is normal on the road to automation, he said. China needs to explore automated farming in steps. The trial drew wide support from local governments, tractor makers and research institutions, and it is expected to wrap up successfully in 2025.

 

[TaiShang]

Chinese agriculture technology startup empowers smart agriculture with “ABC” technologies

By Miao Wanyi (People's Daily Overseas New Media) 15:18, April 08, 2019

Photo courtesy of McFly

Agriculture in China no longer means sickle and pickaxe. Now it is “ABC” technology: A for AI, B for big data, and C for cloud computing, which is reshaping the way the nation does agriculture.

ABC technologies made a splash after the rural revitalization strategy was set as a key plank of the nation’s economic modernization push in 2018.

This year, smart agriculture outperformed other items at the press conference of priorities for agricultural development on Feb. 20, a day after “Rain Water,” the second solar term in the Chinese lunar calendar, indicating the time for early spring planting in southern China.

Smart agriculture, to some, means being precise, as the nation’s agricultural production has been haunted by pesticide overuse and residue for ages.

“China feeds 22% of the world’s population with 8% of the world’s arable land, but also uses 47% of the world’s pesticides, which looms large on Chinese agricultural development. It is time to seriously reconsider the overuse of pesticide,” said Kang Le, dean of the Beijing Institute of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, at a round table of the Third Understanding China Conference held in Beijing in December 2018.

Founded in 2016, McFly, a Chinese agriculture technology startup, completed series A funding of over a 100 million yuan on Mar. 27, marking the latest injection to the company’s smart solution to tackle the pesticide issue.

The company provides precise disease monitoring and pesticide spray services for farmers to better protect crop health and control pest infestation in a targeted way. With hyperspectral remote sensing technology, data collected by monitoring drones is be uploaded to Baidu Cloud, a cloud platform developed by China’s tech giant Baidu Inc., where a solution is simultaneously generated for adjusting the speed of spray and amount of pesticide via drone, which can cut chemical usage in field in half.

Farmers and agricultural entities from Hubei, Jiangsu, and Liaoning provinces have applied the technology over their land of more than 240 million mu, and an average 80% repurchase rate is solid evidence that pesticide control has gained the attention of people working in the modern agricultural industry.

“China’s agricultural production still depends on agricultural chemistry, but the low penetration rate of technology in rural areas is stifling agricultural modernization, so it stands to reason that an increasing number of Chinese scientists will go out of the ivory tower and search for solutions in the field. We are scientists who sow in the cloud and walk barefoot on the ground,” Gong Huaze, CEO of McFly, told People’s Daily Overseas Social Media, without any mince in his words on the nation’s lack of application scenarios in the agricultural industry.

The time of acting based on weather conditions and the experience of famers is long gone. Ag-tech companies not only learn from nature, but from the internet. An array of mature operation models on the internet have been applied to agricultural innovation, and pragmatic solutions have been found to adapt to diverse agricultural scenarios, forming a strong bond between farmers and cutting-edge technologies.

Last April Fool’s Day, Chinese tech giant Tencent launched an AI goose farm project, which was not a practical joke. In fact, Tencent farmers monitor the living condition of poultry with facial recognition technology.

The agricultural cycle is a stable yet slow form of return on investment. Chinese investors still have faith in the rural revitalization strategy, as the Chinese government has spared no effort in vitalizing the agricultural market via the implementation of ABC technologies.

“China has suffered from pesticide residue for years, especially in food security matters. McFly discovered a new path to address the pain point and act as a responsible player to deeply combine technology with an online way of thinking. We are looking forward to seeing more competitive performers in the agricultural sector,” said Zhang Chi, investor of Riverhill Fund, who just helped McFly with the series A funding.

Modern farmers has cottoned on the implication of ecological farming as they benefit from ecological-friendly agricultural products, and it is more other than being lucrative.

For example, China’s Peking University established the modern agricultural college in December 2017 to better serve China’s smart agriculture. Dubbed “gold with a coupon,” modern agriculture with ABC technologies are able to personally train farmers with a passion for agriculture, but also data analysts with an in-depth knowledge of market chains and price volatility.

http://en.people.cn/n3/2019/0408/c90000-9564561.html

 

[JSCh]

14:04, 20-Apr-2019
When agriculture meets science, the yields of land and farmers are skyrocketing
CGTN Zang Shijie, Xu Haoming

Forty-five years ago, people living in the area of Quzhou, in north China's Hebei Province, made money by selling salt. Farmers dug them from the land and extracted it through traditional methods. Improper ways of irrigation and use of fertilizers resulted in a vicious circle, namely saline-alkali land, where nothing could be harvested.

In 1973, a team of seven from China Agriculture University came to Zhang Village located in the center of North China Plain, where the land was flat and the soil was suitable for a variety of crops such as wheat, maize, cotton. However, salt-affected soil resulted in low crop production.

Saline soil in Zhang Village. /China Agriculture University Photo

The team conducted research and worked with local farmers, and reclaimed the salt-affected soil by using fresh water from deep wells for irrigation. They also designed a "Five Drainage Ditches System" to clean the salt.

Things have been changing since the professors from China Agriculture University brought science and technology to this place. The yields of crops in Zhang Village increased from 363 jin (181.5 kilograms) per mu in 1974 to 732 jin (366 kilograms) per mu in 1987.

Quzhou Experimental Station established in 1973. /CGTN Photo

With the help of the staff from the university and the local government, Quzhou Experimental Station was set up for teachers and students to conduct on-land research and experiments to solve local agricultural problems. In 2009, Science and Technology Backyards (STB) were set up in more than 10 villages in Quzhou County. Two to three graduate students live and work in each village, conduct scientific research, and provide face-to-face guidance to local farmers.

"The aim is to efficiently combine academic achievements with farming realities, and at the same time to provide practical ways for students to apply their knowledge with action," said Zhang Hongyan, deputy head of Quzhou Experimental Station, and associate professor at the university's College of Resources and Environmental Sciences.

Students from the university give lessons to the villagers once a week. /China Agriculture University Photo

Qianya Village, 10 kilometers south from Quzhou County, is famous for its standardized grape plantations. "We used to focus on traditional crop plantation, like wheat and corn. In 1982, we turned into cash crops, now grapes are our best seller," said Long Shuyun, secretary of Qianya Village.

In Qianya Village STB, students from the university give lessons to villagers once a week. "They told us how to use water and nitrogen fertilizer, how to choose seeds, and when is the best time to sow or harvest," Long added.

Inspired by the university-village farming system, more than 120 Science and Technology Backyards currently operate in villages across China.

In 2010, Quzhou County nurtured a listed company that focuses on the development and production of natural colors, flavors, essential oils, nutritional and pharmaceutical extracts. The exports of major products like capsicum oleoresin, paprika oleoresin, lutein rank among the top worldwide. Chenguang Biotech Group Co., Ltd, has also developed planting bases for crops such as stevia and artichokes to promote local employment.

Machinery production in the factory. /Chenguang Biotech Group Photo

"The fast development of the company appreciates the hard work of local people, who have been keeping up with the times with the help of innovative technology," Zhou Jing, deputy manager of Chenguang Biotech Group Co., Ltd said.

From 1973, Quzhou County tailored itself with the help of science and technology to local conditions, green agriculture and sustainable development and is on the path to building a more modernized agricultural region.

 

[JSCh]

CABI-led £1.6 million collaboration helps reduce China’s reliance on harmful pesticides

7 May 2019 - A CABI-led project involving an international team of remote sensing and plant protection experts is helping China reduce its reliance on harmful pesticides to fight crop pests and diseases including yellow rust fungal disease of wheat and locusts.

The £1.6 million STFC Newton Agri-Tech Fund-financed project is leaving a lasting legacy in helping the Chinese Government reach its goal of zero increase in pesticide use by 2020 – adopting more sustainable controls, where possible, instead.

This is thanks to cutting-edge data obtained through earth observation, meteorological and vertical looking radar (VLR) which can identify the size and species of flying insects such as locusts, a plague of which, in 2004, devastated 970,000 hectares of farmland in ten Chinese provinces and municipalities.

Where it was necessary to apply pesticides as part of the project, entitled ‘Integrating Advanced Earth Observation and Environmental Information for Sustainable Management of Crop Pests and Diseases’, this was carried out using state-of-the-art precision drone technology from the Anyang Quanfeng Aviation Plant Protection Technology Co. Ltd.

Dr Belinda Luke, a Principle Scientist in CABI’s Biopesticides Team, led an international team of scientists from Assimila Ltd, Rothamsted Research, Kings College London, the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (RADI-CAS), the Institute of Plant Protection at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (IPP-CAAS), the National Agro-tech Extension and Service Center (NATESC) and the College of Environment and Resources Science at Zhejiang University, who focused on seven key objectives to help fight yellow rust (which can affect wheat yields by between 5 and 30 percent) and migratory locusts.

Photo (credit CABI): scientists using measurement poles to determine temperature, humidity, sunshine and windspeed

The team sought to develop; a model to predict wheat rust spread and severity and map it thematically, a locust development model as well as locust maps, and a biopesticide efficiency model alongside a way of determining the effects of using chemical or biopesticides on non-target insects using the VLR.

Dr Luke said, “China feeds 22 percent of the world’s population with only 7 percent of its arable land. It is also the world’s largest producer and consumer of chemical pesticides which have significant negative human health and environmental concerns due to residues.

“The increased use of chemical pesticides is not sustainable hence the Chinese Government introduced legislation to achieve a target to achieve zero growth in pesticide use by 2020, in addition to phasing out use of highly toxic substances.

“This project brought together cutting-edge research to provide pest and disease monitoring and forecast information and encourage biopesticide use by integrating multi-source data to support decision making in the delivery of sustainable management of pests and diseases.”

Dr Luke said the results of the project so far are promising with one book and 42 scientific papers produced, 55 crop pest and disease monitoring and forecasting reports released and 27 thematic maps used by the National Aviation Plant Protection Science Technology Innovation Alliance and the company applying the pesticides by drone.

Dr Luke added, “The government has been using these reports to warn farmers how severe the yellow wheat rust threat is in a particular year. This then allows farmers to decide if it is necessary or not to apply chemical fungicides to their wheat crops.

“Yellow wheat rust is a major problem not only in China but globally. Likewise, locusts and grasshoppers are pests in many regions of the world. The models developed for China could be adapted for use in any other Newton Partner country by collecting base-line data to calibrate the models.”

Training from the project, via China's National Agro-Tech Extension and Service Center (NATESC), has also been given to 2800 technical staff, extension officers and farmers in notable pest and disease ‘hot spots’ who are now able to feed back valuable data to the government who can assist with the problem.

Another benefit of the Newton project is the winning of another through the same fund. The new project, 'Utilizing Earth Observation and UAV technologies to deliver pest and disease products and services to end users in China', involves RADI, Peking University (PKU), Anyang Quanfeng Aviation Plant Protection Technology Co, Ltd, Hangzhou Waobot Technology Co. and NATESC in China and CABI, Assimila, KCL, Loughborough University and Tekever Ltd in the UK.

For both projects, the Joint Laboratory for Biosafety between the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) and CABI played important roles in bringing in, and coordinating with key Chinese partners as well as implementing some aspects of the projects.

For more information see the news story 'Triangular collaboration on development and research projects in focus at 11th Steering Committee of the Joint Laboratory of MARA China and CABI.'

Additional information
Find out more about CABI’s work with earth observation and plant science from the project page.

Main photo: locust – courtesy of Pixabay.



https://www.cabi.org/news-and-media...educe-china-s-reliance-on-harmful-pesticides/

 

[JSCh]

China accelerates rice cultivation in saline soil
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-16 14:47:28|Editor: Liangyu

CHANGSHA, May 16 (Xinhua) -- A leading saline soil rice research center in eastern China's Shandong Province made the decision to expand its experimental land to over 666 hectares early this month.

The Saline-Alkali Tolerant Rice Research and Development Center in the coastal city of Qingdao said the move aims to speed up research and development and optimize the types of saline soil rice.

The center said one other important purpose of the expansion is to seek the best cultivation methods.

"All strains of rice to be grown on the experimental land passed regional experiments in different types of saline soil," said Zhang Guodong, deputy director of the center.

Zhang noted that regional experiments were conducted in Xinjiang, Bohai Gulf in eastern China, northeastern China and coastal areas in southeastern China.

"We were surprised by parts of the experimental data last year. And this year, we are not only expanding the test area but also making stricter test parameters in order to better simulate actual production," Zhang added.

The center has set a target of 300 kg yield per mu (one mu is equivalent to 666 square meters). Meanwhile, researchers will study which rice types are suitable for which areas and which saline-alkali land needs to be ameliorated.

Rice is a staple food in China, as well as many other Asian countries.

China has about 100 million hectares of saline-alkali soil, of which about one fifth could be ameliorated to arable soil.

"This is not a small amount. We want to ameliorate 6.7 million hectares of saline-alkali soil at first, and then expand the area gradually. But the task cannot be done by any single institution; we need to work together," Zhang said.

 

[JSCh]

Trials underway for saltwater rice strains
By WANG XIAOYU | China Daily | Updated: 2019-06-10 06:58

Researchers from Saline-Alkali Tolerant Rice Research and Development Center apply fertilizer to rice seedlings in Qingdao, East China's Shandong province, May 9, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua]

China has planted about 300 new strains of saltwater-tolerant rice on 670 hectares of experimental alkali fields in search of resilient, high-yield varieties that can grow on previously unproductive land.

Qualified varieties will then be promoted for commercial cultivation nationwide, covering about one-fifth of the 100 million hectares of saltwater soil that is believed to have potential for rice cultivation in the country, according to the Saline-Alkali Tolerant Rice Research and Development Center in Qingdao, Shandong province.

Facing the dual pressures of shrinking productive arable acreage and dwindling irrigation capacity, research into saltwater-resistant rice can help safeguard food security in China, said Zhang Guodong, deputy director of the center.

This year, the center plans to submit the first group of seven marketable rice strains to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs for evaluation, Zhang said. If certificates are obtained, the strains will be promoted for large-scale cultivation nationwide.

Areas for trial planting, which are expected to exceed 1,300 hectares by year's end, include five types of land with heavy salt content. They are located in Heilongjiang, Shandong and Shaanxi provinces and in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, he said.

Preliminary tests with different strains have already demonstrated stark contrasts in average yields, Zhang said. For instance, crops planted in test fields in Qingdao are capable of yielding about 10 metric tons per hectare in one harvest year, compared with 3.1 tons per hectare in stretches of salty-alkaline land in Daqing, Heilongjiang province.

"Several factors have led to lower yields, such as the impact of natural disasters. Also, some varieties are simply incompatible with the local environment," he said.

One barometer for determining if a new strain of rice has the potential for mass cultivation is its average output, which needs to be about 4.5 tons per hectare, Zhang said.

"We will further improve our plant breeding and protection methods while strengthening precautions against inclement weather and natural disasters," he said.

"Eventually, we aim to sort out high-yield varieties with stress resiliency designed for salty-alkaline land," he added.

The vast swaths of test fields will also provide insights into how to utilize new technology to boost productivity while cutting down on the use of water, fertilizers and pesticides, said Liu Lin, chief engineer at the center.

"Most salty-alkaline land is in less-densely populated regions. A shortage of labor, coupled with remote distances from abundant freshwater, prompted us to develop intelligent tools and automated machinery to increase efficiency."

In November, the center, in collaboration with telecom giant Huawei, launched a platform that uses big data, the internet of things and cloud computing to offer smart monitoring of salt content in the soil.

The system is also able to collect comprehensive data on changes in the environment and early signs of disease outbreaks or pest infestations, and transfer such information to agricultural experts for analysis and decision-making.

Dubbed the nervous system of smart agriculture, the system has been installed on experimental farmland in Shandong and will soon be rolled out across all test fields, Liu said.

Efforts to transform barren salty land into fertile rice paddies have been going on for at least three decades in China.

In recent years, dozens of research institutes, including the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center and the Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, have joined the mission. Together, they formed a cooperative alliance dedicated to establishing standards applicable to seawater-tolerant varieties.

Zhang said the center is planning to establish international research and promotion centers in Africa and the Middle East in the near future. A handful of countries, including Ghana, Nigeria and Pakistan, have expressed interest in deeper cooperation with Chinese agricultural researchers in rice cultivation.

 

[JSCh]

AI, drone technology transform China's agri-business, launching it into the future of modern farming
By Zhang Hongpei Source:Global Times Published: 2019/6/17 18:18:39

Cooperation needed for high-tech farming

XAG's agricultural drone sprays pesticide on dragon fruit plants in June 2018 in Nanning, South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Photo: Courtesy of XAG

The Chinese farmers' traditional working scene, which usually featured a sweaty vest and chapped hands is gradually being converted by the country's technological advancements in relation to artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and a series of improvements in infrastructure.

The first touch of agricultural drones happened in 2015 with Li Zhiming, a cotton farmer based in Yuli county, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China's largest cotton-growing area. At that time, some farmers around him had already applied the technology on their own plantations to spray pesticide in the air.

An agricultural drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle used for farming purposes in order to help increase crop production and monitor crop growth.

Li, being curious about the use of drones in agriculture, chose to give it a try by using a drone on his 4,900 mu (326.67 hectares) cotton farm, after which, he no longer had to endure tedious farm work.

"Drones have brought us greater efficiency and higher revenues," Li told the Global Times over the weekend.

"I used to rely on tractors to do the pesticide spraying, which took a lot of time. In addition, tractors did damage the cotton plants during the spraying process," said Li. In particular, the use of drones to spray a kind of drug that can control the height of cotton plant has proven to be more efficient than the use of tractors in doing the work, he added.

No tractors mean no damage to the cotton growth, which guarantees greater yields, Li said.

Besides, the volume of work that used to be undertaken by two tractors in seven days can now be completed by four drones in only two days, Li noted.

Being one of the Chinese farmers that have ridden the wave of intelligent agriculture, Li is grateful for the benefits brought about by the technological advancements in the country.

He bought himself four drones just a month ago with each drone priced at about 70,000 yuan ($10,110). Previously, he paid for flying services provided by the domestic agricultural drone maker XAG based in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province. He used to pay 8 yuan for each mu of land and spraying the whole area cost him about 280,000 yuan for seven instances of spraying during the cotton growing period.

"Now we can use own drones to save costs and we can also help neighboring farmers in spraying to earn some money," said Li.

About half of the cotton farmland in Xinjiang has been taken over by XAG's agricultural drones, the company's representative told the Global Times.

Going a step further, Li has already adopted XAG's digital scarecrow on his farm, which is used to monitor and produce data for further targeted services.

AI born from the land

"AI is making headlines nowadays and we're bringing the technology to the field not for the sake of chasing the trend. We have indeed accumulated related data from the land and the crops," said Justin Gong, co-founder and vice president of XAG.

Gong likened the data to "fruit" grown in the field, based on which, the agri-tech company can conduct an analysis at the data center located in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province.

For example, if farmers in South China's Hainan Province want to know for how long their dragon fruit requires sunshine and when it is ready to be put on the market, all of this information can be determined via the collected data, or AI to help farmers make wiser decisions, Gong told the Global Times on Friday.

The company has obtained data on more than 60 million mu of land in the country.

"AI in the agricultural sector is a natural follow-up after related technologies like drones and the internet of things were introduced," said Gong.

Founded in 2007, but turning its eye on the agricultural sector in 2014, the company has 30,000 drones so far working in fields across the crop dusting.

Although the current operational area that has been covered by drones makes up only five percent of all the farmland in the country, Gong is confident that more drones will be used to help Chinese farmers become more professional in the modern agricultural industry.

Compared with traditional spraying heads, the ones used on drones are upgraded technologically so that one drop of pesticide can be divided into smaller drops and sprayed on more farmland, Gong explained.

The Qianzhan Industry Research Institute forecast that the value of the domestic agricultural drone market will reach more than 12.8 billion yuan by 2021, with an annual compound growth rate of 38 percent.

According to the No.1 central document, the first policy statement released by central authorities earlier this year, and seen as an indicator of policy priorities, China has vowed to step up its breakthroughs in key agricultural core technologies and promote independent innovation in areas such as smart agriculture and green agricultural inputs.

Faced with a huge growth potential, domestic tech giants are striving to make larger footprints in this sector.

Shenzhen-based DJI, the world's largest commercial drone manufacturer by market share, is also not missing out on opportunities in the agricultural drone sector.

It launched its latest agricultural drone, the T16, at the end of last year, which features dynamic systems to enhance efficiency and accuracy. In April the drone carried out a fully automated pesticide spraying of an orchard, without a human piloting it, based on a three-dimensional model and AI routes.

"This is the world's first AI application being shown by these agricultural drones," said Xie Tiandi, DJI's director of communications.

"However, we have to say that a real application scenario is still very far in the future and the market is still being educated, so a great leap forward should not be expected any time soon," Xie told the Global Times on Thursday.

In 2015, DJI launched its first agricultural drone, the MG-1, marking its diversification into the industry's drone market.

DJI has estimated that about one-third of the country's farmland could ultimately be serviced by drones.

In addition, China's internet giants are also betting on smart agriculture increasing the efficiency and the income for those of China's farmers that are trained to make better use of big data.

"In the past, farmers took care of their own individual farms and decided what to plant on their own, but now they can use the results of the collected data and produce exactly the kind of rice suitable for targeted consumers," said Zhang Xinguang, senior operation advisor at Agriculture Development Department, Alibaba Alicountryside Business Unit.

Alibaba launched the ET Agricultural Brain last year, which is backed up by its cloud computing arm Alibaba Cloud, in a move to transform China's farming industry via its AI-backed technology, through which production details can be digitally recorded.

The project aims at helping farmers potentially achieve an income of $1,000 for rice per acre of land.

In Hinggan League, North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Alibaba is reinforcing its role as a platform to help sell local rice to the current technology experts on the whole planting process.

"Sensors embedded on the farmd can help them detect whether or not the soil needs water and if the temperature is good for growth," Zhang told the Global Times on Friday.

"Automatic irrigation will soon be realized when the sensor collected data shows what land lacks water," he noted.

Local farmers' income has surged by 40-50 percent because of targeted rice planting, yields and sales throughout Alibaba's ecosystem, according to Zhang.

Cooperation trending

Collected data shows that China has a mere 7 percent of the word's arable land yet it needs to feed 22 percent of the world's population, the fact of which calls for more efficient plantations with higher crop yields.

Intelligent agriculture has met with some difficulties due to the small-scale peasant economy, the major farming economy in China, since it poses an obstacle for intensive production.

"Intensive production and management are the trend for future smart farming, based on which, digital technology can better play its role," said Zhang.

In this sense, both hardware and software firms, as well as local government, should work together to promote the process, he suggested.

As far as Gong is concerned, China's typical small-scale farm is more flexible in terms of adjusting crop planting according to the demand end as the country's consumption needs begin to accelerate.

In comparison, the US' large farms find it difficult to make quick changes if they want to plant a different crop since all related facilities are tailored for that set crop, said Gong.

Gong emphasized that international cooperation should be strengthened in the digital agricultural sector.

XAG, Alibaba Rural Taobao and German multinational Bayer initiated the Sustainable Farming Program last year, in which the latest technologies are developed to build an intelligent agriculture management system with a transparent, traceable food value chain.

"The ongoing China-US trade war has not impacted on our technological cooperation with US firms. On the contrary, we find it more significant to seek joint efforts during this period, and our US counterparts think the same way," said Gong.

"It is acknowledged that the US has leading technology in the digital agricultural sector, but when its firms want to make a foray in the Chinese market, they find some of their advantages cannot be applied to Chinese farmlands, so they badly need a local partner," he explained.

 

[JSCh]

China makes big step to control fall armyworm crop pest
By Chen Xi Source:Global Times Published: 2019/6/19 22:21:00

Fall armyworm. Photo: IC

China's research team has made a breakthrough in dealing with the crop-destroying pest fall armyworm (FAW), which has seriously threatened the safety of China's agriculture and food production.

The team sequenced and assembled the pest's gene and put the assembled gene fragments to the pest's corresponding chromosomal locations, according to a document of the BGI group, a genome sequencing company in China, sent to the Global Times on Wednesday.

"The research of gene sequencing and assembly of the FAW is crucial to further studying the pest's pesticide resistance and long-term prevention and control," the document said.

The research team spent 25 days on the project.

FAW poses a serious threat to the safety of agricultural and food production in China because it is resistant to pesticides, and no registered pesticide has proven effective in killing the pest in China, the Beijing News reported on Wednesday.

The pest has been discovered in 18 provinces and regions, including South China's Hainan Province, Central China's Hubei Province and Hunan Province, and continues to move northward, according to the website of China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs on June 13.

The pest has also damaged crops in nearly 100 countries and regions, reports said.

There was difficulty in trying to transform the research results to actual prevention and control measures. We will continue to study the insect's resistance to different pesticides,the BGI group said.

It said that they are planning to study the migration route of the FAW from southeast Asian countries to China, and help predict and prevent it from invading more important agricultural areas in China, including Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province and Central China's Henan Province.

The genomic data has been uploaded to the data platform of China's National Gene Bank and can be used by researchers all over the world.

The FAW was first spotted in Yunnan Province in January, and China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued a notice in December 2018 to intensely monitor the pest, and instructed Yunnan and other provinces to draw up preventive and control measures.

 

[JSCh]

Wheat sees more color variety in China's trial planting
Source: Xinhua| 2019-06-26 21:02:34|Editor: Liangyu

TAIYUAN, June 26 (Xinhua) -- Wheat is no longer a color name in China. Rubbing off the skin from rippling wheat in northern China's Yellow River basin, the kernels boast a variety of colors from black, green and blue, to red and purple.

The grains waiting for harvest in the 20-hectare colored wheat field in the city of Yuncheng in Shanxi Province are a trial group of wheat planted in a seed breeding program.

The colors of the new varieties are rich in various elements such as protein, amino acids and essential minor elements for the human body, said Song Yu, an associate researcher of the Wheat Crop Research Office of the Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The provincial academy developed the seeds through hybrid breeding with other herbs. The colorful wheat breeds can be used in food, medicine, beauty and other industries, he said.

"The five new varieties of colored wheat were all developed from natural varieties through the team's selection and hybridization research. It has nothing to do with gene modification," Song said.

He said each new wheat breed takes about 10 years of hybrid planting and seed selection.

Song said the yields of the new wheat breeds are higher than the amount of ordinary wheat, and they are also resistant to pests and taste good.

Three of the new breeds, namely Yunhei-14207, Yunhei-161 and Yunnuo-32, got the provincial approval for large-scale planting last year, he said.

"The colored wheat has a more developed root system and wider leaf surfaces, resulting in an increased yield of 40 to 50 kg per mu (a unit area widely used in China equal to about 0.067 ha)," said Chang Haibin, a village head.

Chang said the price of colored wheat is also higher so that the farmers' incomes are expected to rise as well.

 

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Feature: Chinese agricultural technology to help boost Pakistan's rice export
Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-16 08:52:10|Editor: ZX

by Ali Jaswal

ISLAMABAD, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Enjoying a much greater amount of rice yield is not the only reason for Pakistan's young agrarian Wasim Waheed's satisfaction, but achieving exemplary excellence in its research and development by using modern technology is also making him happy and proud.

The 24-year-old agrarian, who is working as a research manager at a rice farmhouse in Lahore of Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, is learning how to double the crop production by using the Chinese hybrid rice technology.

"On average we have cultivated more than 4 tons per acre rice using the hybrid technology while the traditional species yield just 2 tons per acre," said Wasim, a graduate of agronomy from the Agriculture University of Faisalabad, a leading Pakistani university in the field of agronomy.

He said that they sow around 15,000 varieties of rice for research purpose whose data was used to select the best five types for the national trial, supervised by the Federal Seed Certification and Registration Department.

Wasim is quite hopeful that three varieties would be approved this year. "One has already been allowed to market earlier this year."

The project was started in 2014 and has been carried out by Guard Agriculture Research and Services in collaboration with Yuan Longping High Tech Agriculture Company. Yuan Longping Tech has been named after Chinese agronomist Yuan Longping, globally renowned as the father of hybrid rice, who founded hybrid rice varieties almost five decades ago.

The hybrid rice which is bred from two totally different parents could potentially yield other varieties as well with the help of hybrid vigor.

The hybrid rice has various advantages. It can grow in stress areas like saline, drought and water-logging as compared to inbred varieties.

Talking to Xinhua, Abdul Rasheed, the chief research and development officer in Guard Agriculture Research and Services, said that rice generally matures between 30 to 40 degree Celsius, but with the hybrid technology it could even bear 40 to 50 degree Celsius. It consumes less water that reduces the overall cost making it cost effective as well.

Moreover, it matures in 95 to 100 days while the ordinary rice takes around 120 days and due to shorter maturity period hybrid rice crop "consumes less irrigation as compared to traditional rice varieties," Rasheed added.

On the top of everything, the increased yield has almost doubled the income of farmers, which has provided them a great sense of relief.

However, providing necessary skills and training to locals had been a tough job. As it required technical knowledge as well as the application method. Long Chunjiu, chief scientist of Longping South Asia Seed Research and Development Ltd, said that to transfer the knowledge, he not only spent time with five students teaching them hand by hand, but also teaches more than 100 others in another class.

The project enabled Pakistan to develop the hybrid rice seeds which is the core part in the production. "Its like we are sharing a Central Processing Unit (CPU) technology for a digital product which is the highest value part," Long said. In May last year, with the help of Long's team, Pakistan exported around 100 tons of hybrid rice seeds to the Philippines.

Along with the human resource generation, the project also raised the prospects for agricultural entrepreneurs. Sharing his experience, Long, who came to Pakistan 10 years ago, said that "when we first started, one of the rural landholders we worked with could only make a living by selling pesticides and fertilizers."

After learning hybrid rice planting and breeding technology, he now owns a large rice factory and drives a good car, and lives a good life. Many of the farmers who worked in his farm also raised their incomes, bought motorcycles.

The benefits are not limited to the farmers and the land owners, but in fact has trickled down across all levels. Samreen Nazir, an 18-years-old girl who has just completed her high school, is a worker in this farm. She found the scientific management of plantation is very interesting and productive in terms of learning.

Expressing her thoughts to Xinhua, she said that the "introduction of the modern Chinese planting management has literally opened up new opportunities for girls like her." Samreen has been working in the field for the last two to three years and considers the job not difficult for females at all.

She experienced the process of seeding to be easy while harvesting as a tough job especially when the weather conditions get hostile.

Nevertheless, the most important thing that Samreen got from the job is the vision and determination. "This project has enabled new opportunities for the younger generations" especially for the under-privileged classes living in the villages.

Now Samreen strongly believes that she has learnt the modern plantation skill. "I am thinking towards involving in the hybrid rice farming business in the future as I have some know-how about it" and the technology will multiplies the yield making business attractive and tempting.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is determined to enhance the country's exports especially in agriculture. According to the Pakistan's Ministry of Commerce, rice is the largest agro export commodity in the export basket of the country with a total export of over 2 billion U.S. dollars annually.

The access to the Chinese market is one of the main factor that helped the government achieve 2.1 billion dollars in the 2018-19 fiscal year. As per the commerce ministry, "the government has the vision to take rice exports to 5 billion U.S. dollars in the next five years."

 

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Fungi need industrial production: research
Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-22 13:10:38|Editor: Wu Qin

BEIJING, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have called for promoting industrial production of fungi to benefit people, according to a new study paper published in the journal Fungal Diversity.

The researchers from the Kunming Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Science reviewed 50 ways in which fungi can potentially be utilized as biotechnology.

Due to the wide range of habitats that fungi inhabit, and the consequent need to compete against other fungi, bacteria and animals, fungi have developed numerous survival mechanisms, the paper read.

Moreover, fungi can be easily grown with large scale production.

Fungi can also push forward plastic biodegradation and ecological restoration.

Their unique attributes hold great promise for their application in biotechnology and industry, according to the paper.

Fungi have been used in penicillin, lovastatin, and other significant medicines. Consumers increasingly prefer natural compounds over synthetic chemicals, even in industrial sectors that produce commodity chemicals.

The study stated that the application of fungi needs to be explored since it is a highly promising source of anti-infectives, immunosuppressants and other medicines.

The paper: The amazing potential of fungi: 50 ways we can exploit fungi industrially

 

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NEWS AND VIEWS * 31 JULY 2019
How plants perceive salt
High salt levels in the soil harm plant growth and limit crop yields. A salt-binding membrane lipid has been identified as being essential for salt perception and for triggering calcium signals that lead to salt tolerance.

Leonie Steinhorst & Jörg Kudla

Salt as a nutrient for humans is a double-edged sword, being tasty in small amounts but generating an adverse response as the concentration rises. Distinct protein receptors have been shown to mediate these opposing reactions in animals. Excessive uptake of salt is not only unhealthy for humans but also detrimental for plants, because high levels of salt in the soil limit plant growth and crop yields. This is of concern, given that such conditions affect approximately 7% of land globally, including areas used for agriculture, and high salinity affects about 30% of irrigated crops1. Writing in Nature, Jiang et al.2 shed light on how plants recognize salt in their surroundings.


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How plants perceive salt | Nature

 

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China's self-driving "super tractor" starts field tests
New China TV
Published on Aug 4, 2019

Watch how China's driverless "super tractors" conduct test runs in the fields in Henan Province.

 

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Chinese salt-tolerant rice bears fruit in Dubai
By WANG XIAOYU/LIU KUN | China Daily | Updated: 2019-08-05 07:22

Farmers harvest crops as part of a test of saltwater-tolerant rice in Dubai. [Photo/China Daily]

Agricultural scientists from China who set a rice production record in a Dubai desert are expanding their test plantings to look for even more productive strains that suit local palates.

The average annual yield－9.4 metric tons per hectare－has already more than doubled that of previous rice cultivation efforts in Dubai led by India and Pakistan, according to Cheng Yunfeng, manager of Wuhan Haidao International, which is based in Hubei province and oversees the trial planting program.

Cheng said production was similar to high-yield varieties intended for conventional arable land.

The program, which ran from November to June, turned 3.6 hectares of barren desert near the outskirts of the city of Dubai into green paddy fields.

The rice with such abundant yields is known as saltwater-tolerant rice and is a variety developed in China that can cope with heavy salt concentrations and being submerged.

The original, wild crop, discovered on the coast of Guangdong province in the 1980s, has been developed into a family of saltwater-tolerant strains. Trial cultivations across China maximized desirable traits before the project expanded overseas.

"The success of our first trial in Dubai is a crucial step in promoting saltwater-tolerant rice across the Middle East and even around the globe," Cheng said.

A decadelong cooperation plan was signed in mid-July to further expand trial plantings and encourage commercial adoption across the United Arab Emirates, he said.

Trying to grow rice in rocky desert soil is a huge undertaking in itself. In Dubai, a shortage of fresh water compounded the challenge and thwarted decades of attempts to grow crops on a large scale there.

"Ground water used for irrigation in Dubai has an average salt content of 1.6 percent, almost equivalent to the water in the South China Sea," Cheng said. "That would kill tender seedlings for sure.

"To address the issue, we first used the traditional approach of diluting the water's salt content to about 0.6 percent. More importantly, we adopted a dry, direct-seeding method that reduces demand for irrigation water.

"There is no need to apply the dry-seeding approach in our planting center in Wuhan, since the city has sufficient fresh water. But in foreign lands, it's crucial to upgrade techniques to adapt to local conditions."

The bold move to switch seeding approaches meant intense manual labor was needed to complete the planting quickly.

"We transported two rice-sowing machines from China to speed up the process," Cheng said.

But Dubai also has advantages, such as warm temperatures and abundant sunlight that foster the growth of rice.

"In the past year, we have collected a certain amount of data and information that will help us determine optimal sowing seasons in the future and assess how different agricultural practices, including irrigation and use of fertilizers and pesticides, affect eventual output," Cheng said.

In future trial plantings, the company aims to isolate productive rice strains while further enhancing their resilience and fine-tuning the texture to the palates of local residents, who prefer fluffy rice to sticky rice.

"Efficient use of scarce water sources is also on top of our agenda," he said.

 

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New cotton fertilization method developed in China
Xinhua | Updated: 2019-08-05 19:00

A cotton picking machine moves in a cotton field in Dolatbag town of Bachu county, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Oct 30, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING - Researchers have devised a new method of efficient fertilization of cotton with lower nitrogen leaching in sandy soil in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Fertilizers like nitrogen are necessary for the plant's growth, however the ease with which they leach into sandy soil through traditional flood irrigation methods results in low nitrogen uptake efficiency and cotton productivity.

A research team from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of the CAS conducted research in the oasis zone around the Taklimakan Desert, an important cotton growth area.

The researchers reversed the order of the traditional irrigation and fertilization. When the water was drained after irrigation, the urea with high nitrogen was added into the wet soil and was found to be dissolved in mud, said the study paper published in the journal Agricultural Water Management.

The nitrogen can remain in the cotton roots for a long time, which contributes to a high nitrogen recovery efficiency, said the paper.

"This new fertilization method contributes to higher cotton productivity. We can also use 20 percent to 30 percent less water to maintain the yield compared with the traditional methods," said the researcher Zeng Fanjiang.

This result is also of great significance for the scientific management of the nitrogen leaching of cotton as well as other crops grown on sandy soil under traditional flood irrigation conditions, according to the CAS.