Upgrading agriculture

To complement the use of large agricultural machinery and even drones, Chinese researchers have developed a number of high-tech products to help farmers get better access to agricultural know-how, use intelligent management platforms and better control pests and plant diseases.

"I learned how to make better use of fertilizers and herbicides by watching an agricultural livestreaming show. I'm confident that I'll have a good harvest this year," said Jiang Deying from Baoqing county, Heilongjiang.

On Hongwei Farm the use of an intelligent agriculture platform supported by a monitoring system can increase rice yield by about 5 percent while also reducing the use of fertilizers by some 7 percent, said He Peixiong, director of the farm's agriculture department.

In Changfeng county, Anhui province, a group of researchers slowly walk through a wheat field, holding a selfie stick-like device upside down to look for pests.

The early identification and control of pests and plant diseases is critical to guaranteeing healthy crop growth. Agricultural scientists developed the pest recognition tool to help farmers handle pests more effectively.

A camera is installed at one end of the device to capture images of pests and crop conditions. There are also sensors that record the real-time temperature and moisture of the field. All the data are uploaded to and processed in a server to evaluate the potential damage from pests and thus offer effective solutions to farmers.

"We developed pest-recognition software to analyze pictures the device takes in the fields and then tell farmers what kinds of pests they have to deal with," said Du Jianming, a researcher of the Institute of Intelligent Machines, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

After nine years of data collection, over 1 million images of various pests and crop diseases have been captured. The technology can be applied in different crop fields including wheat, rice, corn and soybeans, with an accuracy rate of up to 85 percent. So far, it has been adopted in more than 10 provinces, according to the institute.