Distribution areas of desert soil in China and crops suitable for planting

Desert soil (English name desert soil), also known as "barren-land soil", is a zonal soil developed in arid regions and is also the soil under temperate desert vegetation, including gray desert soil, gray-brown desert soil, brown desert soil, etc. So, do you know in which regions of China desert soil is distributed? What is desert soil suitable for planting?

Desert soil is widely distributed in the desert regions of the tropics, subtropics and temperate zone. The total area of desert soil worldwide is about 16.2 million sq km, accounting for about 11.7% of the global land area. It is mainly distributed in six regions: the Sahara Desert in Africa, the Great Australian Desert in Oceania, the Central Asian Desert, the Arabian Desert, the South American Desert and the Western American Desert. Among them, from the Sahara Desert through the Arabian Desert to the Central Asian Desert, it is almost a connected desert belt, accounting for about 67% of the world's total desert area. The Central Asian Desert includes the deserts of Central Asia, Mongolia and the desert regions of northwestern China. 

In China, desert soil is mainly distributed in most of Xinjiang in the northwest, western Gansu and Inner Mongolia, the Qaidam Basin in Qinghai, and Ningxia and other regions. The area is very large, accounting for nearly about 1/5 of the country's total area, spanning two climatic zones, roughly bounded by the line from the Tianshan Mountains and Mazong Mountains, through the western edge of the Chijin Basin to the Qilian Mountains, with temperate desert to its north and warm-temperate desert to its south. The total area of desert soil in China is about 740,000 sq km, accounting for 7.71% of the country's total land area.

Desert soil is mostly used for grazing, and irrigated agriculture is developed only in places with good water source conditions and flat terrain; it belongs to regions where there is no agriculture without irrigation.

Crops suitable for planting in desert soil should be drought-tolerant, such as foxtail millet, corn, sorghum, peanuts, etc. There are not many fruit tree varieties suitable for it; common ones include sea buckthorn, sand mulberry, black goji berry, red dates, grapes, walnuts, apricots, apples, figs, pistachio (Pistacia vera), etc.