Planted with maize, oats and other crops, the MAP beSide farm has become a demonstration base for high-efficiency water-saving agriculture and comprehensive utilization and improvement of saline-alkali land in the city, said Qin Lilong, general manager of grain crops business unit of Syngenta Group China.
先正达集团中国粮食作物事业部总经理秦立龙表示，MAP beSide农场种植玉米、燕麦等作物，已成为该市高效节水农业和盐碱地综合利用与改良的示范基地。
"According to our calculations, more than 250 cubic meters of water can be saved for one mu of maize per year.
“根据我们的计算，一亩玉米每年可以节水250多立方米。
"It has been difficult to transport farm produce to the market and this road is going to boost our farming business," said a maize farmer Peter Kidelo.
Imports of maize, mostly for feed, are forecast at a record level of 23.5 million tons in the 2021/22 marketing year.
NAIROBI－It is early in the morning and Kenyan Cliff Nyongesa is getting ready to open his maize milling shop in Nairobi's Kawangware suburb, a low-income residential district.
There is already a long queue of customers waiting with bags of maize outside his small shop.
The 42-year-old father of three charges his customers 10 Kenyan shillings ($0.09) to grind two kilograms of maize into flour.
Nyongesa told Xinhua News Agency on July 10 that his business is doing well thanks to the modern maize milling machine he bought from China in 2019.
Since maize is the staple crop for the east African nation, demand for his services is steady throughout the year.
"Most of my customers prefer to buy the maize grains and grind it as compared to buying maize flour from supermarkets," Nyongesa said.
While preparing to establish a national-level innovation center for the maize seed industry, which will cover research areas like chemical plant protection, biological plant protection, soil restoration and agricultural biotechnology in China soon, the European company plans to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of the seed industry by empowering Chinese seed companies via a seed prosperity program.
He is also a top wheat scientist at the Institute of Crop Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences as well as the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, a nonprofit research and training center headquartered in El Batan, Mexico.
The Beijing-based Institute of Crop Sciences runs the lab in partnership with Pakistan's Quaid-i-Azam University and the National Agricultural Research Centre in the national capital Islamabad, through collaboration with the international maize and wheat center.