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The widespread application of new equipment and technology has helped to promote efficient rice seedling cultivation across the province. Let’s take a close look.

Rice seedling bases across the province have been kept busy in recent days. Farmers in Lianyungang, Yancheng, Suqian and some other places have put into operation time-saving and labor-saving high-speed seedling cultivation production lines in a bid to improve the efficiency of seedling cultivation.

Dong Xingrong, a farmer in Jinhu County, has expanded the technology of rock wool substrate printing, sowing, and seedling cultivation under the guidance of experts from universities. In his seedling field, rice seeds are fixed on rolls of paper through adhesive bonding so that evenly-printed paper can be spread into the seedling field.

Under the action of dew, seeds printed on paper germinate and grow, while paper printed with seeds can automatically degrade. A set of processes saves seed costs and the seedlings grow more vigorously.

“The amount of hybrid rice printed and sown seeds has significantly decreased, from 95 grams to 55 grams of substrate cotton. The new technology can replace the subsoil, with excellent permeability, which can solve the problem of difficult soil extraction and cultivate stronger seedlings”, Dai Qigen, Professor from School of Agriculture, Yangzhou University, said.

“It preserves water and seedlings, grows quickly, and has strong tillers in the later stage, laying a solid foundation for the high yield of rice in the later stage. On the basis of traditional seedling cultivation methods, we can increase our income by about 10% to 15% per mu. I grew 1000 mu of rice, which increases our net income by about 200 thousand yuan per year”, Dong Xingrong, Chairman of Zhengrong Agricultural Machinery Professional Cooperative in Jinhu County, said.

Many regions have made efforts to increase the labor cost of seedling cultivation. Jurong County has for the first time introduced a containerized rice seedling production line by moving industrial robots to the fields and empowering rice seedling cultivation with technology.

Two sets of fully automatic seedling raising machines are installed inside the container. As long as the empty seedling trays are placed inside, they undergo a series of fully automatic processes such as soil laying, sowing, covering, watering, and fertilization. In just 8 seconds, 5 trays of seedlings are neatly stacked in place.

“We used to require 14 laborers for old-fashioned production, but now we only need 5 laborers for intelligent production, which can save about 1500 yuan per day”, Zhao Xiancai, Secretary of the General Party Branch of Cangtou Village, Baohua Town, Jurong City, said.

At present, the container seedling cultivation assembly line is mainly suitable for small and medium-sized planting within 5000 mu. The seedling cultivation process can greatly reduce manpower and improve efficiency by about twice compared with the traditional fully-automatic seedling cultivation assembly lines.