◆ Promoting the application of new quality productive forces in agricultural scenarios such as crop breeding and intelligent equipment, better leveraging enterprises' role as innovation entities, and accelerating the pace of building a strong agricultural nation.
◆ Looking ahead, focus should be placed on technological innovation, scenario expansion, new business format development, and whole industrial chain integration reform, adapting to local conditions and coordinating efforts.
This year, Shaanxi Province's Yangling Demonstration Zone is pioneering practices in cultivating new varieties, applying new technologies, creating new business formats, and exploring new models, accelerating the modernization of agriculture and rural areas, and contributing to fostering and strengthening new quality productive forces in agriculture.
A new variety can nurture thousands of hectares of fertile land and benefit the people; a new technology can improve farming efficiency and fill granaries; a new model can make farming twice as effective with half the effort, benefiting countless families... In the Yangling Demonstration Zone, an agricultural revolution driven by new quality productive forces is rewriting traditional agricultural production logic, becoming the core engine for modernizing dryland agriculture development.
Since its establishment in 1997, the Yangling Demonstration Zone has focused on breeding new crop varieties, with thousands of new wheat, rapeseed, and other crop varieties being approved and promoted nationwide, laying a solid foundation for China's food security. It has prioritized the promotion and application of modern agricultural "new technologies" and "new models," relying on over 350 agricultural technology demonstration and extension bases to illuminate the "harvest road" with technology.
When midsummer arrives, being at the Yangling agricultural demonstration and extension bases spread across dryland areas, one can truly feel: rapeseed flowers bloom brilliantly by Qinghai Lake, their fragrance spreading across the snowy plateau; tea gardens are scattered like stars across the Qinling Mountains, with tea fragrance lingering throughout the mountains; medicinal herbs sway in the wind on Liupan Mountain, their herbal scent drifting through the valleys...
Marking the 28th anniversary of the Yangling Demonstration Zone's establishment, more than 10 Yangling agricultural technology demonstration and extension bases across five provinces and regions - Shanxi, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, and Shaanxi - are focusing on regional characteristic resource endowments, refreshing the new landscape of the nation's "agriculture, rural areas, and farmers" development.
**Innovation-Driven, Agriculture Foundation More Stable**
Seeds are the "chips" of agriculture and the core driver for promoting high and stable crop yields. As a highland of seed industry innovation, Yangling's breeding technology has always been at the forefront nationally.
In early July, rapeseed fields in Qinghai's Xining were in full bloom. Standing at the Qinghai breeding base of the Shaanxi Hybrid Rapeseed Research Center, with a gentle breeze passing through, thousands of acres of rapeseed fields filled the air with floral fragrance. Dong Yuhong, deputy director of the Shaanxi Hybrid Rapeseed Research Center, felt deeply gratified watching the excellent performance of the "Qinza You 101" and "Qinyou 908" varieties she had cultivated on the plateau.
Dong Yuhong noted that over the past four years, seed production work for the "Qinza You 101" and "Qinyou 908" rapeseed varieties in Qinghai's Huangzhong District has achieved remarkable results. Currently, both varieties maintain stable seed production areas of around 500 acres each.
The breeding bases of the Shaanxi Hybrid Rapeseed Research Center are distributed nationwide. From 2018 to present, the center has bred 47 varieties, successfully transferred 36, with a cumulative promotion area of 35 million acres and new economic benefits of 3.5 billion yuan, forming a pattern of "breed one, transfer one, succeed with one" for achievement transformation, establishing a new model for agricultural technology achievement conversion.
In the Yangling Demonstration Zone, research institutions like the Shaanxi Hybrid Rapeseed Research Center are numerous. Among them, Northwest A&F University, Shaanxi Vocational and Technical University of Agriculture and Forestry, and other research institutions are committed to breeding, developing, and promoting new varieties, new technologies, and new models.
Solidly conducting key core technology research, Yangling remains unwavering in its commitment. At Northwest A&F University's Jinchang Dairy Sheep Test Demonstration Base, through expert team development of new "dairy-meat" dual-purpose sheep breeds, a circular economy industrial chain format dominated by the dairy sheep industry has been formed in Gansu's Jinchang area.
It is understood that besides molecular breeding technology, expert teams are also committed to developing key technologies for dairy sheep efficient reproduction, precision nutrition, and disease prevention and control. From breeding to raising, to product development and deep processing, technology permeates every link of the dairy sheep industry.
It is precisely these Yangling technologies that make a glass of sheep milk contain rich technological "codes," bringing consumers higher quality, more nutritious, and more delicious dairy product choices.
Taking the apple industry as an example, the "Luochuan Apple" golden brand, with new variety support, has not only enriched fruit farmers but also allowed enterprises to taste success. In 2012, Northwest A&F University jointly established the Luochuan Apple Test Station with relevant departments in Yan'an City, focusing on core industry problems, conducting scientific research, technical training, and demonstration promotion, achieving multiple breakthrough results and injecting strong momentum for industry upgrading.
Since establishment, expert teams have taken root on the front lines, breeding 13 apple varieties with independent intellectual property rights, with national promotion areas exceeding 400,000 acres; using large seedling dwarf dense planting cultivation technology, achieving fruit trees "bearing fruit in the second year, high yield in the third year"; breeding cold-resistant new varieties, expanding apple planting areas northward by over 200 kilometers...
Opening Yangling's technological innovation "report card," it's clear that demonstration and promotion of new crop varieties, new technologies, and new models have become synonymous with Yangling's modern agricultural development. Behind these dazzling numbers lies the wisdom and sweat of thousands of Yangling research experts.
In recent years, Yangling technology workers have visited bases, consulted experts, and interviewed farmers. Vivid pictures show fresh examples of Yangling agricultural technology demonstration and extension bases "showing farmers how, leading farmers to do, guiding farmers to earn," helping guide more technological achievements to transfer and transform to impoverished areas.
Notably, in vigorously promoting improved varieties, Yangling has established a biological breeding technology innovation system represented by wheat, corn, rapeseed, potatoes, vegetables, and apples around building China's (dryland) seed industry silicon valley, adding one new national integrated breeding-propagation-promotion seed enterprise annually for three consecutive years. The pace of technological innovation in Yangling moves forward steadily and solidly.
**Developing Smart Equipment, Empowering Rural Revitalization's "Fast Track"**
Agricultural technology development must not only empower industry quality and efficiency improvement but also continuously contribute to rural construction. In the production workshop of Shaanxi Shangnan County Qinyuanchun Tea Industry Co., Ltd., the intelligent withering control system developed by Northwest A&F University's College of Horticulture can adjust temperature and humidity according to its own needs, ensuring tea leaves fully release moisture and aroma during the withering process.
Meanwhile, in mountainous tea garden operation scenarios, due to uneven ground surfaces, traditional manual tea picking faces many challenges, with field labor costs rising annually. Northwest A&F University's developed cantilever self-propelled tea picking machines and pruning machines effectively solve this problem.
Professor Jin Hongling from Northwest A&F University's College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering introduced that this tea picking machine can automatically identify tea canopy height and position parameters, with completely automated operation requiring no manual intervention, significantly reducing labor costs while maintaining tea canopy surfaces basically level after harvesting and pruning.
The tea industry market has always been highly competitive, with tea quality being enterprises' "lifeline." Northwest A&F University, in collaboration with Qinyuanchun Tea Industry through production equipment improvement initiatives, continuously promotes deep integration of new quality productive forces with traditional tea industry.
Today, production equipment flashing with "intelligent light" and visual digital displays are vivid footnotes of Northwest A&F University expert teams empowering Qinyuanchun Tea Industry's transformation toward new quality productive forces.
Now, at Shaanxi Fengxian's forest musk deer breeding base, vigorous and active forest musk deer have become one of the leading industries for Fengxian residents' income increase and wealth creation. The injection of Yangling agricultural technology has transformed forest musk deer breeding from "empiricism" to "scientific operation," significantly expanding profit margins.
In breeding facilities, forest musk deer wearing smart ear tags feed leisurely while technicians monitor various growth data in real-time with mouse clicks. This isn't a science fiction scene but a new landscape brought by technology-assisted forest musk deer breeding, not only enabling enterprises to achieve profit growth but also leading farmers toward prosperity.
Despite their small size, forest musk deer are treasures for income increase and wealth creation. Farmers' income sources include not only forest musk deer breeding but also musk produced by forest musk deer, which is high-quality medicinal material in great national demand, serving as farmers' "treasure" for further income increase.
From "tea processing techniques" to "forest musk deer breeding," from "apple cultivation" to "smart equipment"... Yangling continuously strengthens agricultural key core technology research, increases agricultural technology achievement transformation demonstration, fosters and strengthens leading industries, promotes primary, secondary, and tertiary industry integration development, using the "pen of technology" to paint a "revitalization picture" in rural areas.
**Building Exhibition "Golden Bridges," Activating Modern Agriculture's New Momentum**
As a major driver of local economic development, exhibition empowerment has become a key initiative for promoting modern agricultural development. In Shaanxi Yangling, the Agricultural High-tech Fair, Dual Trade Fair, Livestock Expo, Western Agricultural Machinery Equipment Exhibition... a series of exhibitions release powerful momentum for Yangling's economic development, driving Yangling's modern agriculture toward high-quality development.
The Agricultural High-tech Fair, held for over 30 years, has become a UFI-certified exhibition and China's 5A-level comprehensive agricultural exhibition with its authority and accessibility, with a brand value of 87.119 billion yuan, cumulatively attracting over 35 million merchants and visitors, and promoting the transformation and application of 12,000 technological achievements and technologies to fields.
Through the window of the Yangling Agricultural High-tech Fair, agricultural technology innovation is accelerating, with "intelligence" and "modernization" increasingly becoming keywords in the "agriculture, rural areas, and farmers" sector. The Agricultural High-tech Fair has become an important platform for demonstrating and promoting China's agricultural technology achievements and an important window for agricultural opening-up.
In Yangling, besides the annual Agricultural High-tech Fair, the Western (Yangling) Agricultural Materials and Seedling Trade Fair (the "Dual Trade Fair") and Livestock Expo held in February and March, and the Western Agricultural Machinery Equipment Exhibition held in May are also highlights of the "Agricultural Science City" series activities.
Early spring is a critical period for spring farming production, and holding the "Dual Trade Fair" helps promote high-quality and efficient completion of spring farming production, contributing "agricultural science strength" to ensuring national food security.
As an important component of the Yangling Agricultural High-tech Fair, the Yangling "Dual Trade Fair" has been held continuously for 17 sessions since its establishment in 2009, cumulatively attracting over 3,000 enterprises from 25 provinces (regions, cities) and over 600,000 merchants and visitors, displaying 17,000 new varieties and new technologies of agricultural materials, seedlings, and agricultural machinery, playing important roles in serving characteristic modern agricultural development, promoting agricultural technology achievements, and assisting rural industry revitalization.
Particularly at this year's "Dual Trade Fair," the Rural CEO Cultivation and Promotion Conference and High-Quality Farmer Training Connection Conference, along with field exhibition areas supported by smart agriculture demonstration parks, became major highlights of the exhibition. Keeping pace with the times and being pragmatic and efficient have become synonymous with the exhibition.
While adapting to current trends, the "Dual Trade Fair's" "Spring of Science and Technology" publicity and consultation activities invite agricultural experts to provide online and offline question-and-answer services for the public, more down-to-earth demonstrating the "Dual Trade Fair's" unchanged original intention and mission over decades.
Notably, in May this year, the China Yangling Agricultural High-tech Fair Summer Session and 2025 AME Western Agricultural Machinery Equipment Exhibition opened in the Yangling Demonstration Zone, focusing on displaying new achievements and technologies in modern agricultural equipment, presenting a feast of intelligent, efficient, and green agricultural machinery equipment.
Nearly 200 well-known enterprises participated with flagship products, with exhibits covering mechanized products for the entire agricultural production process including tillage, sowing, plant protection, and harvesting.
Today in Yangling, agricultural technology exhibitions are building platforms for resource sharing, technical exchange, and trade cooperation, promoting deep integration of agricultural technology innovation and industrial innovation, contributing to building a source of new quality productive forces in dryland agriculture and providing strong support for high-quality modern agricultural development.
**Leveraging "SCO Base," International Cooperation "Goes Global"**
Opening Yangling's international "circle of friends," overseas park construction, online and offline foreign aid training, hosting international conference activities... differentiated and diversified new models of international cooperation contribute "Yangling solutions" to globalized economic development.
Now, with the deep advancement of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Agricultural Technology Exchange and Training Demonstration Base construction, the demonstration zone continuously deepens high-level opening-up, conducting friendly exchange and cooperation with SCO-related countries and multiple Central Asian and African countries, with continuously expanding international influence.
Particularly in recent years, Yangling has successfully hosted over 20 international activities including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development Forum Yangling Sub-forum, actively providing "Yangling solutions" for agricultural modernization development in SCO-related countries; efficiently conducting various types of agricultural foreign-related training, cumulatively training over 2,400 agricultural officials and technical talents for SCO countries, cultivating over 300 international students, achieving dual improvement in scale and quality of foreign exchange and cooperation.
In 2019, Northwest A&F University jointly established the China-Belarus Agricultural Technology Demonstration Park with the Belarus National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The demonstration park has successively introduced 120 new varieties of crops including wheat, soybeans, and buckwheat. Among them, "Xinong 198," jointly bred by China and Belarus, is a high-quality disease-resistant, high-yield wheat variety that has entered Belarus's wheat variety adaptability evaluation program.
Professor Feng Baili from Northwest A&F University introduced that currently, eight new wheat lines are performing well. This year they will also be planted in test fields of the Belarus National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, breeding high-quality wheat varieties suitable for local climate conditions through hybridization with local varieties.
Now, Yangling promotes production through cooperation, with an initial construction of an international agricultural capacity cooperation system. Currently, 10 overseas agricultural technology demonstration parks have been built, with 73 batches of over 190 experts dispatched, completing trials and promotion of 115 excellent varieties across 13 major categories including wheat and corn.
Yangling's "technology seeds" sprout vigorously in international farmlands, building bridges for the demonstration zone to "go global." Similarly, for SCO countries, drought and water scarcity represent major challenges for agricultural development. With water-saving irrigation systems from China being applied and promoted in SCO countries, this situation is gradually improving.
In 2021, Professor Zhu Delan from Northwest A&F University's College of Water Resources and Architectural Engineering led a team to bring China's advanced solar-powered water-saving irrigation technology and intelligent water-fertilizer integration technology to Uzbekistan, building the China-Uzbekistan Water-saving Agriculture Overseas Demonstration Park covering nearly 100 acres, creating water-saving irrigation systems suitable for local conditions.
In recent years, Zhu Delan's team has conducted important research projects in Uzbekistan, successively cooperating with Tashkent State Agricultural University and Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers to build the China-Uzbekistan Smart Irrigation Joint Laboratory.
"Our developed irrigation system has increased crop yields in the demonstration park by 30%, saved 50% of water consumption, and reduced cost investment by 40%, helping SCO-related countries better achieve sustainable development," Zhu Delan said.
In Shaanxi Yangling, Chinese agricultural experts like Feng Baili and Zhu Delan, resembling "migratory birds" shuttling between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and other countries, are numerous. They irrigate international farmlands with wisdom, solve key technical problems constraining crop yield and quality improvement for local farmers, and sow "golden seeds" of dryland agriculture.
Now, with the deep development of globalization and digital economy, cross-border e-commerce has gradually become an important component of global trade. Leveraging "free trade zone, comprehensive bonded zone" policy stacking advantages and agricultural technology education resource advantages, Yangling has also constructed an integrated supply chain system of "origin direct procurement—quality inspection and sorting—cross-border logistics."
To date, the Yangling Demonstration Zone has exported fresh fruits to over 10 countries including Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia, involving over 10 varieties including kiwi, blueberries, lemons, grapes, navel oranges, melons, and wokan, totaling nearly 3,000 tons. From January to April this year alone, total import and export reached 470 million yuan, with more and more high-quality Chinese agricultural products selling globally from Yangling.
As a key initiative for foreign exchange and cooperation, conducting foreign aid training is a major focus of the Yangling Demonstration Zone's foreign exchange. Relying on Northwest A&F University, Shaanxi Vocational and Technical University of Agriculture and Forestry, and other institutions, the SCO Agricultural Base has built "online + offline" training platforms, creating a full-chain cultivation model of "theoretical teaching + practical training + industrial connection."
Now, the base has conducted over 120 agricultural technology foreign aid training sessions and special training programs, with 42,000 people participating in online learning. As the platform effect of the SCO Agricultural Base continues to expand, thousands of agricultural technology talents come to the "Agricultural Science City" to study, returning with "Chinese experience" to be active in global agricultural fields, promoting solutions to more global agricultural problems.
Facing new development opportunities, the Yangling Demonstration Zone will continue to accelerate the construction of a new pattern of agricultural international cooperation that is "rooted in China, radiating to SCO, connecting neighboring regions, and facing the globe," assisting dryland agricultural transformation and upgrading with more "Chinese solutions," contributing more valuable experience to solving global agricultural problems.
Through 28 years of trials and hardships, the Yangling Demonstration Zone is working hand in hand with over 7,000 agricultural technology and education talents in the zone, using new quality productive forces as the pen to paint a new landscape of China's high-quality agricultural development, transforming more "laboratory results" into "good field harvests," providing replicable "Yangling samples" for agricultural modernization.
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