Agricultural precision cultivation and digital planting help promote rural revitalization

At present, it is the season when various early maturing grapes are ripe and on the market. At Shengjun Grape Manor in Hanting District, Weifang City, Shandong Province, the base of Weifang College’s agricultural precision cultivation and digital planting technology team, mid to late maturing grapes, mainly Sunshine Rose and Queen Nina, are entering a critical period of color transformation and maturity. Entering the base, clusters of heavy grapes hung full of vines, with plump and delicate fruit grains, emitting a fruity aroma in the air.

At the beginning, I mainly focused on pure theoretical research, but such research did not play a direct and important role in the actual development of the grape industry. “Speaking of the past of the team’s establishment, Professor Zhao Yueling, the head of the agricultural precision cultivation and digital planting technology team at Weifang University, opened the conversation.

By chance, Wang Shiping, an expert in fresh grape research at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, was enlightened by her words: “You can organize a technical service team to live in the fields and serve fruit farmers. In three to five years, you can achieve good results. We in Shandong need a technical team that can convince fruit farmers and truly serve production.” Upon hearing this, Zhao Yueling, along with Jiang Xuelian from the same school Zhao Sheng and Teacher Cui Ying hit it off and established a technical team in 2016, delving deep into the fields and “seeking experience from the land”.

Due to the fact that all team members come from a professional background and do not have sufficient knowledge of actual agricultural production, at the beginning, everyone could only go deep into the field and learn production experience by eating and living with local experts at the base. Subsequently, team members designed dozens of small experiments to combine traditional production experience with modern agricultural technology to solve the problem.

At present, the team has carried out multiple agricultural assistance services. In addition, the team also collaborated with the MAP of Sinochem Group to develop digital planting technology, and spread the research results nationwide through the MAP platform. Focusing on the development needs of the agricultural industry, team members actively promoted the integration of scientific research achievements with local and enterprise needs, achieving effective transformation of achievements and industrial application.

Different places require different technologies to be matched, and what we need to do is choose grape products that are suitable for our local Shandong region and match the corresponding technologies, “said Jiang Xuelian. For Sunshine Rose and Queen Nina, the team has developed precise management and intelligent control technology for grape tree bodies, flowers, fruits, and water and fertilizer, which can reduce water by 30%, fertilizer and pesticide by 40%, and labor by 50% in the cultivation process, greatly reducing production costs.

Due to the technical support of the team, the quality of Sunshine Rose grapes in the cooperative base is stable and has a deep industry influence. For three consecutive years, Shandong Zhucheng Meixiang Garden has obtained the pricing power for fresh grape sales in Shandong, and has also become a leading poverty alleviation enterprise, driving the development of Sunshine Rose grape cultivation in Jiayue Town, Zhucheng, covering over 2500 acres.

Anqiu City, Shandong Province, is a major vegetable export city, especially with the highest export volume of ginger in the country. However, in recent years, viral diseases, root knot nematode diseases, and ginger blast caused by nutrient reproduction and repeated cropping have led to a sharp decline in local ginger production and quality. To solve the disease, it is necessary to apply a large amount of medicine to the land, and the safety of ginger, as a tuber crop, cannot be guaranteed. Such a severe situation has left local farmers at a loss.

At a critical moment, Zhao Yueling’s team extended a helping hand to the local area. In response to this situation, we have adopted two solutions. “Teacher Feng Jiali, a team member, introduced,” We use ginger tissue culture technology and detoxification technology to make tissue culture and detoxification seedlings, removing viruses and insect eggs from the seedlings. In addition, specific bacterial agents are screened to regulate the balance of microorganisms in the soil, inhibit harmful bacteria, and increase beneficial bacterial activity, achieving crop yield and quality improvement.

After several years of development, the team has formed a comprehensive talent cultivation mechanism. Zhao Rijiang, an outstanding graduate of the team, has repeatedly taught agricultural knowledge as a guest on the Agricultural Science Channel of Shandong Radio and Television Station. A group of innovative talents with ideals, abilities, and responsibilities have taken root in the land of Qilu, promoting more scientific research achievements from the laboratory to the field, and making new contributions on the vast stage of rural revitalization.