Zibo Unmanned Farm Achieves Further Improvement in Wheat Harvesting Technology

In the three summers, the wheat waves roll and the vast land presents a scene of abundant harvests everywhere. At the unmanned farm in Linzi District, Zibo City, drone production testing and harvesting are being carried out simultaneously, making wheat harvesting labor-saving, reducing losses, and improving efficiency.

In the thousands of acres of wheat fields of Zibo Hefeng Seed Industry Technology Co., Ltd., unmanned harvesters are shuttling back and forth in the waves of wheat, and in the fields that have not yet been harvested, drones are also patrolling the air to complete production testing ahead of schedule. The sky and ground work together, giving this year’s wheat harvest a strong sense of technology. Wang Yuzhe, a research assistant at Zibo Hefeng Seed Industry Technology Co., Ltd., said, “Now we have installed differential positioning systems on our agricultural machinery and use unmanned driving technology for harvesting. In the early stage, we used drone remote sensing technology and laser mapping technology to collect crop elevation information through drones. By creating elevation maps, we can analyze the number of ears per acre, number of grains per ear, community area, and plant height

It is understood that Qimin 28, which is being harvested by Hefeng Seed Industry, is an independently selected variety that can mature 3 to 5 days earlier and increase yield by about 7% compared to Jimai 22. The application of unmanned remote sensing technology has also made breeding work twice the result with half the effort. Wang Yuzhe, a research assistant at Zibo Hefeng Seed Industry Technology Co., Ltd., said, “In the past, when we counted the number of ears and grains per acre, we used to count them in the ground ‘facing the loess and facing the sky’. One person may not be able to count several varieties in a morning, but now we can use this drone remote sensing technology to analyze nearly 2000 varieties in just one morning, which is both efficient and accurate

In 2017, the first ecological unmanned farm in China was implemented and constructed in Hefeng Seed Industry. The project innovatively implemented a solution for the full process unmanned production of crops, explored the integration of IoT technology with agronomy and agricultural machinery, and promoted the deep integration of agronomy and intelligent agricultural machinery. After more than 5 years of development, today’s unmanned farms have basically achieved unmanned operation in farming, planting, management, and harvesting. Professor Yin Xiang from Shandong University of Science and Technology said, “After 5 years of system development, we have now achieved intelligent and unmanned operation throughout the entire process, from cultivation and harvesting to automatic control of the entire farm’s operation process management. The use of unmanned farming mechanisms can theoretically achieve 24-hour operation, ensuring the progress of emergency harvesting and planting during the summer and autumn seasons.