Hu Yuanfeng, head of Dawukou MAP beSide farm of Syngenta Group China, said the MAP team adopted advanced drainage technology with concealed pipes to continuously discharge saline water and constructed a large pumping station to draw irrigation water from the Yellow River.
先正达集团中国区大武口MAP beSide农场负责人胡元峰表示,MAP团队采用先进的暗管排水技术,连续排放盐水,并建造了一个大型泵站,从黄河中抽取灌溉水。
Alibaba has pledged to cooperate with a saline soil rice research and development (R&D) team to increase production and farmers' incomes, according to Thursday's Beijing Youth Daily.
The saline soil rice R&D team of Yuan Longping, China's "father of hybrid rice," will be supported by Alibaba in retail and big data.
The saline soil rice will be cultivated on a large scale with the cooperation of Yuan's team and Alibaba, vice president of the e-commerce giant Wang Jianxun told the newspaper.
And Alibaba will help explore the sale of saline soil rice.
Cultivating the saline soil rice could both increase the country's grain yield and help farmers shake off poverty, the newspaper said.
Yuan Longping, 88, said that if 6.7 million hectares of saline land could be used to grow saline-alkali tolerant rice, the country could produce an extra 30 billion kilograms of rice.
According to local government, the paulownia is resistant to saline and alkali soils, can grow roots in sand, and blooms with luxuriant lichens and leaves, all of which make them an ideal choice to block wind and sand.
Food crops including corn and wheat, if grown in saline soil, may not produce high yields, but salt-tolerant pasture grasses like alfalfa are a suitable choice, said Zhang Jian, a Party official of Liupu.
These pastures can also help improve saline soil, Zhang added.
Of this total, 60 percent of the soil is saline, 26 percent sodic, and the remaining 14 percent saline-sodic.
This in turn will fuel the economies of Chinese regions with saline areas holding large lithium reserves, industry leaders revealed.
"Lithium production has been expanding over the past two years," said Ma Peihua, a senior government official and former vice-governor of Qinghai province, which is one of China's biggest saline regions.
The thriving market has fueled China's major saline areas such as Qinghai, the Tibet autonomous region and Sichuan and Hunan provinces.
"In the past few decades we have developed sophisticated technology in lithium extraction," said Gao Yuan, president of Pulead Technology Industry Co Ltd. "We need to map out a global strategy with government support for the saline areas with adequate technology and capital support, like they have in South America," Gao added.
Saline and alkaline soil is dubbed the "incurable disease" of land due to its low yield characteristics.
Agricultural experts stressed the importance of guarding this bottom line firmly and also advised turning another 100 million hectares of saline-alkali soil, also known as saline soil, into arable land.
The amount of salt in saline soil ranges from place to place in China, but it is above that level, thus making it hard to support the growth of crops.
"Data from the center show there are 950 million hectares of saline land globally.
Some 22 percent of this land is in East Asia, and China has 100 million hectares of saline soil and 128 million hectares of arable land.
Some 6.67 million hectares of saline land is located in coastal areas around Bohai Bay and near the southeast coast.
The nation's northeastern provinces, where the winter permafrost is more than 1 meter deep, are home to about 10 million hectares of saline land.
As a result, salt accumulates and the soil becomes saline.