Eyeing food security, China strengthens domestic grain supply

New technological innovations have also been adopted to develop superior grain varieties.

"This year, we've conducted tests on over 20 new soybean varieties," said Luan Xiaoyan, a seed-breeding expert at the soybean research institute of Heilongjiang's provincial academy of agricultural sciences.

As the country's largest soybean production base, Heilongjiang sees its soybean planting area accounting for more than 40 percent of China's total. Local agricultural authorities have recommended 23 new superior soybean varieties for breeders over the years, helping boost the yields.

A novel soybean variety called "Heinong 84," which was developed by Luan and her team, is their major breakthrough in integrating high-quality traits such as high yield and resistance to pests, and was granted national approval last year.

"It was beyond my expectations when the average yield per mu (one mu equals about 666 square meters) exceeded 200 kg," said Zhang Xianwu, a farmer in Mulan County, Heilongjiang Province. Zhang planted over 530 hectares of the "Heinong 84" soybean last year.

This year, Zhang has signed another contract with Luan to expand his planting area by 2,000 hectares of "Heinong 84."

At the Qixing farm in Heilongjiang, Liu Yongbing, who owns over 20 hectares of rice fields, has adopted a new seedling raising technology this spring. With constant temperature and humidity provided by a dark room, the pregermination procedure can be reduced from the previous seven to eight days to a mere two days.

Covering over 70,000 hectares in area, the farm has also integrated China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, 5G network, robots and other cutting-edge technologies with its farming machinery system. Now it has taken the lead in remote unmanned control of its intelligent agricultural machinery, according to Liu.

Hunan's Yongshun County, in the hinterland of the Wuling Mountain range, has introduced the latest rice sowing technology, which can evenly arrange seeds on a special non-woven fabric for the raising of rice seedlings.

The new practice can shorten the seedling raising cycle while improving the quality of the seedlings. "We now can grow more than double the previous quantity of rice seedlings in the patches," said Huang Wenjun, a local farmer in Shangping Village of Yongshun County.

China has set a target to ensure the full-year grain output stays above 650 billion kg in 2022. Last year, China's grain output hit a new high of 683 billion kg, with grain farmland exceeding 117 million hectares.