Remarkable Achievements in Agricultural S&T Innovation in the New Era

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping at its core, China has ramped up the pace of agricultural S&T innovation and registered historic accomplishments.

Major breakthroughs and leaps forward have been made in key sectors such as seeds, farmland, agricultural machinery and equipment, biosafety and biosecurity, and green and low-carbon development. The contribution of technological progress to agricultural output increased from 54.5% in 2012 to 63.2% in 2023, while the per capita share of grain grew from 450 kilograms in 2012 to 493 kilograms in 2023. These achievements have played a vital role in ensuring national food security, increasing farmers' income, maintaining social stability, and promoting social development.

China has managed to catch up in breeding technologies and has moved into the lead in some respects

A single seed is like an agricultural "chip" that integrates multiple functions—increased yields, resistance to insects and disease, mechanical compatibility, and agronomic traits. As carriers of genetic information, germplasm resources are the cornerstone of innovations in breeding and strategic resources that all countries compete to collect and preserve.

China holds the second-largest collection of crop germplasm in the world, having collected and preserved nearly 560,000 resources by the end of 2023. It has also established the world's largest wild rice germplasm nursery in Sanya, Hainan, laying the foundation for maintaining its leading edge in both theoretical research and practical rice breeding.

Led by Academician Yuan Longping and through collaborative research, Chinese scientists developed "three-line" and "two-line" hybrid rice systems, which increased yields by 20% and 29%, respectively, over conventional rice. In 2019, a team of Chinese scientists successfully developed the first apomixis system for hybrid rice, paving the way for large-scale utilization of distant heterosis (a “one-line” hybrid system) and low-cost hybrid seed preservation. In 2023, China developed super hybrid varieties of rice with a yield of more than 18 metric tons per hectare, setting a new world record for yield per unit area of hybrid rice in a single season.

Efforts to enhance both farmland management and the application of technology have led to steady improvements in overall soil productivity

Arable land is the lifeblood of food production. Food security is a matter of paramount national importance, and the redline for the total area of farmland must be strictly defended. This redline refers not only to the quantity of farmland but also to its quality.

Since 2012, China has steadily ramped up S&T innovation and research for farmland management, ensuring steady improvements in overall soil fertility. Adopting an overarching, multi-pronged approach, we have carried out projects on high-quality farmland development, chernozem soil protection, and farmland soil pollution control and restoration.

By 2022, China had developed a total of 66.67 million hectares of high-quality farmland, covering around 80% of the country's grain production capacity. This has resulted in a 10-20% increase in grain yield per hectare and cost-efficiency gains of around 7,500 yuan per hectare. It has also effectively promoted agricultural mechanization, digitalization, standardization, and specialization, while enhancing the resilience of farmland to both drought and flooding.

Agriculture has become much more mechanized and intelligent, greatly improving overall farming efficiency

Since 2012, China has made great strides in upgrading agricultural machinery and equipment and mechanizing agricultural operations, with breakthroughs in the R&D of large, high-powered farming machinery and equipment. By 2023, the total mechanical power of machinery used in farming had reached 1.1 billion kilowatts, with the overall mechanization rate for crop farming exceeding 74%.

The successful development of 300-horsepower tractors with continuously variable transmission, 580-horsepower forage harvesters, and large square balers has resolved China's previous dependence on imported large intelligent agricultural machinery and broken the long-standing foreign monopoly on advanced farming equipment.

By incorporating Beidou satellite navigation technology, agricultural machinery can operate autonomously and carry out precise field management. This has greatly enhanced the overall efficiency of farming.

Biosafety and biosecurity governance have been steadily enhanced, providing robust support for the consistent bumper harvests of recent years

Since 2012, China has achieved major advances in strengthening biosafety and biosecurity governance and in preventing and treating harm from invasive species.

A migration monitoring network centered on high-resolution insect radar technology has been successfully developed for dealing with the fall armyworm—a destructive pest that affects a wide range of crops, but primarily corn. This system can accurately identify incoming populations from Southeast Asian countries in real-time and provide early-warning for prevention and control.

As a result, the fall armyworm has been contained to areas south of the Yangtze River, thus effectively safeguarding China's two major corn-producing regions—the summer corn region of the Yellow River-Huaihe River-Haihe River Plain and the northern spring corn region. This system has been a source of strong support for China’s bumper harvests.

China also led the way in developing an effective bivalent H5/H7 inactivated avian influenza vaccine. Over 300 billion doses of the vaccine have been distributed and administered. This vaccine halted the spread of the H7N9 virus among poultry and eliminated the threat of human infection at its source. It also effectively mitigated the harm of the H5N1 and H5N8 avian influenza viruses that were ravaging poultry stocks and threatening human health worldwide.

It has been exported to a number of Belt and Road partner countries, including Egypt, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Iran. Through such efforts, China has led the world in putting in place a system for preventing human disease through animal health monitoring and vaccination programs.

The development of eco-friendly, low-carbon agriculture has been stepped up, and our capacity to ensure the safety of agricultural products has been steadily enhanced

Green and low-carbon development is an international trend and reflects the general direction of progress. Indeed, the green economy has become a strategic high ground in global industrial competition. We must ensure that our agricultural sector is green and grounded in conservation by adopting eco-friendly and low-carbon agricultural practices. In recent years, China has made notable progress in improving yields while reducing fertilizer and pesticide use, thanks to a growing capacity to supply eco-friendly, low-carbon farming technologies.

As part of the search for greener methods to both reduce pesticide use and effectively combat pests, Chinese scientists developed an integrated “anti-pest net” technology to essentially provide a protective screen for cowpea crops in Hainan Province.

The system integrates multiple elements, including physical barriers, colored sticky traps, biological control, and the application of efficient, low-toxicity pesticides. With this technology, chemical pesticide use was 30% lower compared to open-field cowpea cultivation. Major pest populations were reduced by 70%, and crop yields rose by 20%.

Moreover, despite the introduction of more stringent testing criteria, the crops cultivated under these methods maintained nearly 100% compliance with pesticide residue standards. The ultimate result of all this has been higher incomes for farmers and better food safety for consumers.

In the area of aerial pest control operations, advanced drone technologies and intelligent control systems have been introduced. These systems scan crop leaves to collect data on plant quantity, density, height, and growth conditions. Based on this analysis, they then precisely spray pesticides onto crop leaves. This approach, which minimizes chemical use, has proved 60 times more efficient than traditional pest control methods.

Innovations in agricultural technology are being applied at a faster pace, creating broader development opportunities for rural industries

Industrial revitalization has a central place on our rural revitalization agenda, and it is the starting point of our work in agriculture. We have harnessed S&T innovation to invigorate various resources and production factors in a bid to upgrade the entire rural industrial chain while also promoting continuous improvements in infrastructure and public service systems.

For example, to leverage the abundant solar and thermal resources of the vast Gobi Desert in the northwestern region, we have developed a vegetable industry based on protected agriculture. This has involved the development and roll-out of easy-to-assemble, lightweight greenhouses that are wind- and pressure-resistant and adapted to desert conditions. Using solar capture and storage technology, these greenhouses store heat during the day and release it at night, raising internal nighttime temperatures by 4–5 °C while creating energy savings of 63–73.5%.

Thanks to condensate technology for water vapor recovery and recycling, only 20 liters of water is needed to produce a kilogram of tomatoes, representing a 50% reduction in water consumption compared to open-field tomato cultivation.

Today, arch-shaped greenhouses, solar greenhouses, and multi-span greenhouses are ubiquitous across the northwestern region, helping to support the year-round balanced supply of vegetables and other agricultural products. The greenhouse vegetable industry has become a “new oasis” in the Gobi Desert.

Editor: Zhang Xian