BEIJING: Farmers began harvesting seawater rice on Tuesday, planted on 3,860 hectares of salt-affected land in the wetland area of Hanting district, Weifang, a coastal city in Shandong province.
The yield per mu (0.067 hectares) this year is 698.4 kilograms on average, and is the fourth consecutive year of increased yields, according to field tests carried out by five agricultural experts.
Several years ago, the land in the district was barren due to high salt content, which substantially reduced the grain yield. The wheat yield per mu on the land was less than 100 kg, forcing many farmers to abandon the land, according to the local government.
China has 100 million hectares of salt-affected soil, and one-third of it has the potential for agricultural activities, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
Agricultural workers in China are committed to comprehensively using salt-affected soil by employing methods ranging from managing the soil to make it suitable for crops, to breeding salt-tolerant crop varieties.
On the large area of salt-affected land in Hanting district, Shandong Binyuan Agricultural Science and Technology Co has been working with a team formed by the late Yuan Longping, the nation’s top agricultural scientist who was known as the “father of hybrid rice”, to improve the salt-affected soil and cultivate salt-tolerant rice varieties for four years.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
