Rice yield per mu in China's rice-wheat double-cropping regions hits a new historic high

It was learned from the College of Agriculture of Yangzhou University that the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Science and Technology recently organized experts from relevant universities and agricultural research institutions to conduct an actual yield acceptance inspection of the super-high-yield cultivation project for precise mechanical transplanting of rice pot seedlings in Yaojia Village, Diaoyu Town, Xinghua City. After measuring the area, weighing, and determining the moisture content and impurity rate of rice grain samples, the final calculation showed that the average yield per mu of the project plot in 2015 was 987.8 kg, with the highest plot reaching 1017.7 kg per mu, setting a record for the highest rice yield in China's rice-wheat double-cropping regions.

Yaojia Village, Diaoyu Town, Xinghua City, is one of the demonstration areas of the super-high-yield cultivation project for precise mechanical transplanting of rice pot seedlings, jointly implemented by Yangzhou University and the Xinghua City Agricultural Technology Extension Center under Jiangsu Province's promotion of the National Grain High-Yield Science and Technology Project. On the same plot of land here, using the same variety and the same technology, a stable super-high-yield record of over 800 kg per mu has been achieved for 10 consecutive years on a contiguous 100-mu area under rice-wheat double cropping, and a super-high-yield record of over 900 kg per mu has been stably achieved for four consecutive years. This year, the project plot covered 102.5 mu and used the super-high-yield rice variety Yongyou 2640, an indica-japonica hybrid rice. The project plot adopted precise cultivation with pot seedling mechanical transplanting, showing high population uniformity, good balance, sufficient panicle number, large panicle type, ample sink capacity, good grain filling, and a fresh green appearance at maturity, with high yield.

The key to Yaojia Village's ability to stably achieve super-high yields lies in the most direct support provided by high-yield varieties and advanced agricultural technology. During the implementation of the National Grain High-Yield Science and Technology Project in the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, Yangzhou University, the Jiangsu Provincial Crop Cultivation Technology Guidance Station, the Jiangsu Provincial Agricultural Machinery Technology Extension Station, Changzhou Yameike Machinery Equipment Co., Ltd. and other units addressed the major technical problem that the original mechanical transplanting of small carpet-grown rice seedlings in trays had low productivity and was not easy to achieve high yields. They adopted a method integrating agricultural machinery and agronomy, and through specialized research and super-high-yield cultivation breakthroughs on key technologies such as improvements to rice machinery and seedling trays under different rice regions and multiple rice cropping systems, the adaptability of rice varieties to pot seedling mechanical transplanting cultivation, methods for cultivating strong pot seedlings, quality factors and density effects of mechanical transplanting, and fertilizer and water management in the field, they relatively systematically clarified the production advantages, growth and development characteristics, and (super) high-yield formation patterns of rice pot seedling mechanical transplanting, and established a precise high-yield cultivation technology system for rice pot seedlings.