Across China: Major wheat-producing province innovates to increase yields

SHIJIAZHUANG, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Color, plumpness, weight, quality. Wheat seeds are carefully inspected in a testing room at Malan Farm in Shijiazhuang, capital of north China's Hebei Province.

"Seed selection is like a grand examination. The 'top students' that are most suitable for planting only appear after standing out in thousands of testing rounds," said Pan Yuheng, who is in charge of the farm's seed testing.

The Malan No. 1 wheat variety yielded a record 863.76 kg per mu (about 0.067 hectares) in Yanli Village, Xingtai City this year, thanks to advantages such as cold and disease resistance.

Agricultural experts have been sent to the frontline of farming. Before last winter, approximately 16,000 agricultural technicians were working alongside farmers in the fields to ensure green wheat shoots were able to survive the cold weather.

And these efforts were not in vain. Hebei's total summer grain output in 2022 was 14.87 million tonnes.

As one of the major grain-producing provinces in China, Hebei established 14 seed breeding innovation teams between 2016 and 2020. In the 2021-2025 period, the province aims for 20 innovation teams in modern agriculture and a number of excellent varieties with independent intellectual property rights, according to the provincial agricultural authorities.

In addition to quality seeds, the use of the cultivation technology "BeiDou navigation plus drip irrigation" also provides a strong guarantee for water and fertilizer conservation and higher yields, according to Jia Xiuling, a researcher at the Hebei Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences.

With developing the seed industry as one of its priorities in agriculture, China had 216 national seed breeding and production bases, official data showed in April.