Smart irrigation fuels bumper cotton yields

URUMQI — Although close to the desert, a cotton field on the outskirts of Shihezi city in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has become a high-yield field full of vitality thanks to an advanced intelligent agricultural system.

The system, featuring integrated irrigation of water and liquid fertilizer, is one of the major factors in Xinjiang becoming China's main cotton-producing base and a leader in modern agricultural development.

The system adds more than 1,500 kilograms per hectare in yield to the cotton field, which covers more than 20 hectares.

"The system forms a network by collecting data such as moisture and humidity, and agricultural decisions are all determined based on the data," said Xie Xingguang, director of the local agriculture department.

The system's most important function is to realize smart water-saving drip irrigation in Xinjiang, reducing irrigation water volume to 5,250 cubic meters per hectare. In the 1950s, it was 10,500 cu m per hectare.

The irrigation network can reach the roots of every plant through shallow-buried pipelines and effectively channel water and fertilizer into them, said Ma Zhandong, an agricultural engineer at Xinjiang-based Tianye Group, a State-owned enterprise affiliated to Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.

Since its establishment in 1996, Tianye has developed into a large-scale enterprise involving the chemical industry, modern agriculture, mining and other fields. Its water-saving drip irrigation products are sold at home and abroad.

Water resources are among the most critical factors restricting agricultural development in Xinjiang. Thanks to the transformation from "watering the land" to "irrigating the crops", irrigation efficiency has greatly improved and crop planting areas have grown.

Last year, Xinjiang's cotton output reached 5.11 million metric tons, accounting for over 90 percent of the country's total. Its grain output exceeded 20 million tons, increasing by over 3 million tons, accounting for more than 30 percent of the country's total.

In the meantime, some enterprises have focused on developing high-level agricultural machinery suitable for Xinjiang's geographical environment and agricultural needs, which is also a key factor in the development of modern agriculture in a vast and sparsely populated region like Xinjiang.

Based on the production features of cotton and other crops, Xinjiang urgently needs to develop agricultural machines that can realize precision sowing and picking.

Chen Xuegeng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and leader of a mulching machine development team under Shihezi University, developed a series of machines in 2003 that integrate mulching and cotton sowing in Xinjiang. The efficiency of such a machine is equivalent to the work of 300 people.

The continuous efforts of local enterprises, multifunctional tractors, modernized irrigation systems and unmanned seeders equipped with Beidou navigation systems have turned more deserts into farmland in Xinjiang while freeing more people from hard farm work.

Last year, nearly 7,000 cotton pickers were used in mechanized harvesting in Xinjiang, and the mechanization rate increased to over 85 percent from 35 percent in 2014.

More than a dozen agriculture-related listed companies have been fostered in Xinjiang, covering agricultural machinery and equipment manufacturing, animal husbandry, deep processing of agricultural products and other fields.

Modern farms have mushroomed in northwestern China's vast deserts in Xinjiang, making it an advanced region for developing large-scale, intensive, mechanized and intelligent modern agriculture.

Xinhua