China's 30 million mu of coastal tidal flats will become a reserve grain barn
These are now the last few days of rice harvest. At Shuntai Farm in Sheyang County, Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, on the shore of the Yellow Sea, a formerly abandoned saltworks has become ten thousand mu of rice paddies, with a salt content above 3‰ and as high as 8‰, and only wild salt-tolerant plants such as seepweed, reeds and triangular bulrush on the field ridges.
China currently has 35.18 million mu of coastal tidal flats,
Academicians Zhu Yingguo and Chen Wenfu led more than 20 experts in on-site actual-harvest yield measurements of some varieties, and varieties such as "Nanjing 9108" and "Yandao No. 12" reached per-mu yields of 617.8 kg and 612.8 kg respectively.
China currently has 35.18 million mu of coastal tidal flats, of which Jiangsu has 1.031 million mu, and it silted up at a rate of about 30,000 mu per year. Among this, Jiangsu has more than 3 million mu of tidal flats suitable for growing rice, equivalent to 10% of the province's rice planting area, while in the past they could only be used for salt drying and fish farming.
Wang Cailin, a well-known rice breeding expert and researcher at the Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, analyzed that the special water environment formed by salt-tolerant rice cultivation also has ecological effects such as leaching, suppressing salt and reducing salinity, and balancing soil fertility, which helps the continuous improvement of saline-alkali soil. Moreover, rice is very suitable for mechanized harvesting and planting and large-scale operation, which exactly matches the characteristics of sparsely populated coastal tidal flats and labor shortages.
In recent years, domestic universities and research institutes have bred a number of new salt-tolerant rice varieties. Hainan University, in cooperation with the Hunan Rice Research Institute, has bred multiple rice lines with salt-tolerant characteristics, including Haixiang 030, Haixiang 016 and Haixiang 121. The Grain Crops Research Institute of the Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences has bred new reserve salt-tolerant, high-quality, high-yield rice varieties NY047-1, NY48-3 and NY55-6, which, when planted on coastal tidal flats with a salt concentration above 3‰, reach national standard grade 3 in rice quality. The Jiangsu Coastal Area Institute of Agricultural Sciences has successively bred the medium indica rice variety Yancheng 156, which has been promoted and planted for more than 6 million mu cumulatively in the coastal rice areas of Jiangsu.
Experts believe that China should attach importance to and strengthen research on the breeding and cultivation techniques of salt-tolerant rice varieties to expand the area of high-quality farmland. They suggest that relevant national and local departments provide project support to accelerate development and utilization.