Agricultural hi-tech zone cultivates seeds for global food security

Professor Zhang Zhengmao and his students have been working hard on a farmland in Yangling, an agricultural hi-tech zone in northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

Wheat seeds to be produced will be sent to Central Asian countries after harvest next summer.

The Yangling Agricultural Hi-tech Industrial Demonstration Zone, the first national-level zone of its kind established in 1997, not only attracts agricultural technology innovation teams but also leads the development of agricultural modernization for arid and semi-arid areas.

With his passion for agricultural research, Zhang, a seed specialist and professor from Yangling-based Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, has long been working on selecting and breeding new wheat varieties for the Central Asian region to improve local grain yield.

"Our selected wheat varieties have been planted in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and other countries, and some varieties have increased local production per unit area by more than 60 percent," said Zhang.

Thanks to the advanced agricultural science, education, and training resources in Yangling, the selected improved varieties have been planted in overseas demonstration zones with a total area of 250,000 mu (about 16,667 hectares).

In addition to transferring premium seeds and technology to other areas, this zone is also responsible for cultivating agricultural talents for many countries.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Demonstration Base for Agricultural Technology Exchange and Training, officially inaugurated in 2020 in Yangling, has trained over 27,000 people from SCO countries both online and offline.

"Facing the pandemic, we invited more agricultural experts from various fields to carry out online teaching. The courses on field management and water-saving irrigation were very popular, and each class attracted some 2,000 online students," said Ma Jing, an official at the base.

China has carried out exchanges on agricultural science and technology with more than 140 countries and regions, and promoted more than 1,000 agricultural technologies in developing countries, driving the crop yield in the project areas to increase by 30 percent to 60 percent on average, official statistics show.