Zhao Huifen of Tang County Helps Farmers Increase Income Through Good Technology

"The cut surface of the scion must be smooth, the cut surface must show a bit of white, and the junction where the rootstock cut meets the scion must be wrapped tightly all over." When we met Zhao Huifen, she was in the jujube orchard north of Gushan Village in Koutou Town, explaining the key points of the "Shuguang No. 1" grafting technique to the village grafting team. "With 'Shuguang No. 1' as the leading new variety, the quality and yield of our Xingtang jujubes will be comprehensively improved, and the villagers are not far from good days of escaping poverty and becoming prosperous!"

As the head of the Red Jujube Technology Station of the Xingtang County Agriculture, Forestry and Animal Husbandry Bureau, Zhao Huifen rushes about the mountain villages almost every day, carrying out the promotion of new jujube tree technologies and new varieties. Over the past 12 years, Zhao Huifen has led the staff of the entire station in promoting practical new jujube pruning technologies and the new jujube variety "Shuguang No. 1" in the mountainous areas. The county's jujube output increased from 80 million kg in 2003 to 120 million kg in 2015, and the output value increased from 160 million yuan to 360 million yuan.

"As an outstanding agricultural technician, I think that when you have good technology, you should promote it without shirking responsibility, so that good technology becomes a golden idea that benefits more jujube farmers," Zhao Huifen said.

In order to comprehensively promote the 18-character new tree body transformation technology of "open the tree center, level the branches, manage finely, balance fertilizer, be pollution-free, quality first," and to promote the improvement of quality and efficiency of Xingtang jujubes, Zhao Huifen simply stationed herself in Caobotou Village, going door to door day and night to do ideological work with jujube farmers, and mobilizing people in surrounding villages to carry out transformation and renewal according to the new technology.

Soon, the jujube farmers' enthusiasm for scientific pruning was stirred up. Zhao Huifen became a very busy person, plunging herself into poor mountain gullies to teach jujube farmers the new jujube pruning technology. With advanced new jujube tree technology, jujube farmers who changed their thinking soon threw off the hat of poverty they had worn for many years.

"Yang Guoqing of Aoyu Village has 30 mu of jujube orchard. In 2003, he earned only 1,000 yuan from selling green jujubes. In 2004, through branch leveling and pruning, his income from red jujubes that year was more than 10,000 yuan, and in 2006 the orchard's income reached 70,000 to 80,000 yuan. Now the jujube orchard area has expanded to more than 60 mu, with a stable annual income of 130,000 to 140,000 yuan." Zhao Huifen introduced that today, there are more than 40 large Xingtang jujube-growing households like Yang Guoqing that rely on new technology management to earn more than 200,000 yuan a year.

Over the past 12 years, Zhao Huifen has held more than 120 training sessions on jujube cultivation technology and pest and disease control in jujube areas, trained more than 10,000 farmer-person-times, established more than 20 demonstration bases for new technology promotion, completed tree body transformation on more than 400,000 mu, and established a "never-leaving" team of local jujube management "soil experts" for more than 20 villages. For this, Zhao Huifen was awarded the title of "Hebei Province Forestry and Fruit Technology Expert" and was hired by the Hebei Provincial Forestry Bureau as a "jujube tree expert."

Jujube output went up, but Xingtang's climate accelerated the large-scale occurrence of jujube fruit shrinkage disease and fruit cracking disease, causing many jujube farmers to have a bumper harvest without a bumper income. Zhao Huifen then began working on variety improvement of Xingtang jujubes, promoting the new jujube variety "Shuguang No. 1," which is highly resistant to fruit shrinkage disease and fruit cracking disease.

"Only by being on the front line can you discover problems and provide timely technical guidance." Zhao Huifen made her own work plan: visit 14 grafting villages to inspect the current progress of new variety grafting, guide grafting techniques, and organize jujube farmers to carry out training on pest and disease control knowledge...