Tomato cultivation gets a wondrous helper, boosting profits
On the 15th, at the height of the busy tomato pollination season, vegetable farmer Wang Quantang and his wife from Guojiawu Village, Beiwu Town, Shunyi District, were relaxing in the shade of the trees by their greenhouse. It turns out they had brought in mysterious helpers to their greenhouse, who had taken over the most arduous chore of pollination. With these capable workers, their per-mu income from a single tomato crop increased by at least 4,000 yuan.
Guojiawu Village is a well-known tomato-specialized village. Wang Quantang has grown vegetables in the village for 18 years and can be considered a veteran. As they grew older, he and his wife became increasingly apprehensive about pollinating tomatoes. During the dog days of summer, which is also the busiest time for pollinating autumn-crop tomatoes, the greenhouse feels like a sauna; an ordinary person standing still inside would be drenched in sweat within 10 minutes.
Wang Quantang explained that his family used to pollinate tomatoes by hand. Dipping flowers for pollination once per greenhouse took more than half a day, and the entire pollination period required dipping flowers 15 times, taking eight or nine days in total. Hiring short-term laborers locally cost 120 yuan a day, so this alone amounted to about 1,000 yuan in labor costs. Because of this, many households in the village switched to growing other crops such as lettuce.
"Last year, the municipal plant protection station gave us bumblebees for free, and they took care of all the pollination work. Not only did it save on labor costs, but tomato yield and quality also improved noticeably. There are basically no deformed fruits, and on average each plant bears 6 more tomatoes." At this point, Wang Quantang's joy was written all over his face. "This year, the village's tomato greenhouses increased from more than 300 to 500. For our last crop of tomatoes, the average price per kilogram was 4 mao higher than in other villages, yet vendors still lined up to buy them, and we had no trouble selling at all." Speaking of the low prices and unsold tomatoes appearing in other provinces and municipalities, Old Wang felt that agricultural products still needed some exceptional technical content for vendors to compete for them.
A person in charge at the plant protection station of the municipal agriculture bureau explained that survey results on bumblebee pollination of tomatoes showed that compared with manual pollination, bumblebee pollination reduced the rate of deformed fruits by 10%, increased yield by 20.4% per mu, and produced tomatoes with well-formed fruit shape, even color and high quality. The price per kilogram was about 0.4 yuan higher than that of nearby manually pollinated tomatoes, increasing income by at least 4,000 yuan per mu for a single tomato crop. At the same time, the station also joined with the Shunyi District plant protection station and the Beiwu Town government to establish in the town a high-quality tomato production demonstration base using bumblebee pollination and full-process green pest and disease control, helped Guojiawu Village set up the Xindi Lvyuan Tomato Planting Professional Cooperative, and applied to register the "Guojiawu" high-quality tomato trademark, so that while increasing farmers' income, more city residents can also eat safe, high-quality tomatoes.