BEIJING: In a move to bolster the country’s food security, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region has been included in the national pilot initiative for the comprehensive utilization of arable land resources, particularly saline-alkaline land.
The region has 11.5 million hectares of arable land, with saline-alkaline land accounting for more than 9 percent.
The regional department of agriculture and animal husbandry plans to integrate the comprehensive utilization of saline-alkaline land into the broader strategy of establishing a national key agricultural and animal products production base.
The department said it will adopt the idea of “selecting good seeds to suit the land and improving land to benefit the growth of seeds”, to promote nine integrated technologies for saline-alkaline land utilization in the three major irrigation areas of Hetao, Tumochuan and the West Liaohe River, covering some 178,000 hectares.
At the Hetao irrigation area, measures have been taken to transform unevenly planted mild saline-alkaline land into fertile fields characterized by “drought-resistant irrigation, flood drainage capacity and reduced salinity”, Xinhua News Agency reported.
At Hinggan League, annual production of saline-alkaline-tolerant rice has exceeded 7,500 kilograms per hectare for five consecutive years, said Wang Shigang, leader of the experts’ working station. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
