Editor's Note: Nine curves of the Yellow River and eighteen bends, rushing east into Hairun Qilu. From October 20 to 21, 2021, General Secretary Xi Jinping went to Dongying City's Yellow River estuary, agricultural high-tech industry demonstration zone, and relocated communities in the original flood storage and detention area of the Yellow River to learn about the ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin. On October 22, 2021, General Secretary Xi Jinping presided over a symposium on in-depth promotion of ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin in Jinan and delivered an important speech. He stressed: Set the goal, be down-to-earth, immerse yourself in hard work, work hard for a long time, and make unremitting efforts to bring the Yellow River to the benefit of the Chinese nation forever. In order to tell the story of the Yellow River well and record Shandong's actions in the great cause of "making the Yellow River a happy river that benefits the people", Qilu Evening News Qilu One Point launched a special report "The Island of Great Rivers" to record how the land of Qilu nurtured by the great river continues to write a new chapter in ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin.
The saline land of the Yellow River Delta spreads the good news of a good harvest!
Recently, in the soybean test field in the agricultural high area of the Yellow River Delta in Shandong Province, after expert production testing, the average yield of soybeans this year is 445 jin per mu.
Farmers in the Yellow River Delta know the value behind yield: this is food grown on saline land! This once extremely barren land is now a productive granary.
"In the past, this was all saline land, not to mention grain, even the grass did not grow." Li Ruitian recalled the saline-alkali land before the improvement, "When it rained, the sun was shining, and the white expanse here was flooded with saline. ”
As the administrator of the experimental field in the Yellow River Delta Agricultural High Area of the province, 52-year-old Li Ruitian was born and grew up here, "white in spring, rainy in summer, no harvest for ten years and nine years, and half a year's grain of chaff." This folk proverb that popped out of Li Ruitian's mouth expressed the difficulties of farmers on saline-alkali land. Due to the high salt content of the soil, except for a few salinity-tolerant plants such as Suaeda, almost no grass grows.
The Yellow River Delta is an alluvial plain formed by the sediment deposited at the Bohai Sea depression at the mouth of the Yellow River. As a result, its central city Dongying City faced a worldwide problem at the beginning of its birth - saline-alkali land governance. Measurements show that the saline-alkali land area of Dongying City is 3.418 million mu, accounting for 38% of the saline-alkali land area of the province, and it is one of the largest and most difficult delta-type saline-alkali lands in the mainland and even the world. Among them, the area of saline-alkali cultivated land is 1.96 million mu, accounting for 59% of the cultivated land area of Dongying City. Saline-alkali land is called the "terminal disease" of the land, and severely saline-alkali land is almost a barren land.
How to wake up a sleeping saline land? Saline-alkali lands are both a constraint to sustainable development and a reserve resource with great potential. How to do a good job in the comprehensive development and utilization of saline-alkali land and carry out the comprehensive utilization of saline-alkali land is of great strategic significance to ensuring national food security and securing China's rice bowl.
In October 2015, the State Council approved the establishment of the Yellow River Delta Agricultural High-tech Industry Demonstration Zone, which is the second national-level agricultural high-tech industry demonstration zone in the mainland. From the very beginning, this land with a total area of 350 square kilometers has become a "field of hope": saline-alkali soil covers an area of 439,700 mu, accounting for more than 80% of the total area; The soil salinity content was distributed from west to east from 1‰ to 10‰, covering three types of saline-alkali land, which was a typical representative of coastal saline-alkali land and a natural testing ground for exploring new technologies for barren alkali land treatment.
It is precisely because the types of saline-alkali land are extremely comprehensive, so the "national brand" agricultural high area shoulders the mission of solving special problems - the comprehensive utilization of saline-alkali land.
A scientific and technological battle quietly started at the mouth of the Yellow River...
Dongying City and the Yellow River Delta Agricultural High-tech Industry Demonstration Zone have issued a series of policies and measures to provide experimental fields and necessary scientific research conditions for scientific research institutes stationed in the demonstration zone.
Researchers are conducting experiments.
"New model of pipeline water saving and salt reduction" to crack the salinization of land, apply microbial agents to improve the promotion of soil, implement precision fertilization technology, carry out green prevention and control of agricultural diseases and pests, implement the reform of planting system, and increase vegetation conservation ecology...
Seeds are the "chip" of agriculture, and in the selection of breeding, the Yellow Delta Agricultural Highland is exploring the transformation from traditional field screening and hybrid breeding to molecular design breeding. In recent years, various breeding teams have collected and preserved 18,000 salt-tolerant germplasm resources in the agricultural high area, screened and evaluated more than 6,000 breeding materials, initially selected and bred 37 new strains, demonstrated and promoted 92,000 mu, and increased the benefit by 15%-20% per mu. On the 12,800 mu saline-alkali land modern agricultural experimental demonstration base, saline-tolerant food crops such as triticale, quinoa and soybeans and saline-tolerant pastures such as alfalfa and oats have been planted successively. Walking on multiple legs, the Yellow Delta Agricultural High Area has embarked on a path of ecologically efficient agricultural development in saline-alkali land, and the former "barren land" has become the current "land of hope".
Another bumper yearFor all farmers in the Yellow Delta Agricultural Highlands, October 21, 2021 is an unforgettable day.
On the morning of this day, General Secretary Xi Jinping, who was inspecting Dongying City, came to the Yellow River Delta Agricultural High-tech Industry Demonstration Zone.
Agricultural technicians introduced the transformation of breeding ideas in the demonstration area, from the treatment of saline-alkali land to the selection and breeding of saline-tolerant plants to adapt to saline-alkali land.
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "This is like developing dry farming, not to control dry land, but to promote suitable drought-tolerant plant varieties." ”
"The general secretary bent down in the bean field to pick a few pods, twisted them with his hands and examined them carefully, and then put a bean into his mouth and bit it." Luo Shouyu, head of the Technology Innovation Center for the Comprehensive Utilization of Saline-alkali Land in the Yellow Delta Agricultural High Area, recalled the scene.
The Nongao area in late autumn is like a colorful canvas in the vast wilderness of the Yellow Triangle. Alfalfa, quinoa, green manure crops, soybeans are all in the harvest season. During the inspection, walking along the fields one by one, the general secretary carefully understood and asked from time to time about the characteristics, quality, yield, and efficiency of crops. "The general secretary is very concerned about the management of salt-tolerant crops and knows very well. Quinoa is a new crop, and the general secretary can accurately name some of its characteristics. Luo Shouyu recalled.
Today, in the Yellow Delta Agricultural Highland Area, the fruit-rich bean fields are connected like a blazing plain.
The deeper meaning lies behind this bumper harvest of soybeans: although the mainland's soybean production continues to rise, due to the growing demand, the supply cannot meet the market demand, and still needs to be imported in large quantities, and the mainland has now become the world's largest soybean importer. Increasing yields and expanding planting area are the main solutions to make up for the soybean gap in the mainland.
Some experts estimate that the mainland has nearly 550 million mu of saline-alkali land, and if on the one hand, the soybean yield of the existing arable land is doubled, and on the other hand, 100 million mu of marginal land is added to grow soybeans, and the soybean yield of saline-alkali land is 130 kg per mu, then the mainland is expected to achieve a soybean self-sufficiency rate of 40%-50%. The emergence of new strains of salinity-tolerant soybeans provides the core elements for deep cultivation of saline-alkali land and abundant large grain silos.
The saline-alkali lands of the Yellow River Delta bear fruit.
The key to the development of agricultural science and technology is inseparable from the support of high-level scientific research teams. Focusing on salt-tolerant high-quality crops such as salt-tolerant grains and oils, salt-tolerant forages, and salt-tolerant Chinese herbal medicines, the Yellow Delta Agricultural Highland has attracted a large number of domestic salt-tolerant crop breeding expert teams to carry out breeding work, and built a breeding platform and 9 saline-alkali land breeding demonstration bases for saline-alkali selenium-rich high-yield soybeans, salt-tolerant rice, high-quality salt-tolerant alfalfa, high-quality forage sweet sorghum, and saltland quinoa.
Potatoes grown in saline land during the summer potato harvest season.
This year, not only the soybean harvest was bumper, but other crops on the saline-alkali land also bore fruitful results: 900 jin of triticale, 380 jin of quinoa... With the popularization and application of a series of soil improvement technologies, the saline-alkali land of the past "ten years and nine years without harvest" has gradually shown a new look.
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