Guiyang and Gui'an's smart farming boosts agricultural development

Nanmudu town's smart vegetable seedling breeding. [Photo/Guiyang news network]

Guiyang City and Gui'an New Area have applied digital technologies to agriculture in recent years: breeding superior seeds, managing fertile fields, improving machinery, and refining farming methods.

At the vegetable seedling breeding center in Nanmudu town, technologies such as one-touch startup, automated fertilization, and intelligent temperature and humidity control have made seedlings in the greenhouse trays lush and green.

Workers are currently selecting seedlings for transplanting to lay the foundation for the next harvest, with 12 million high-quality seedlings already prepared. The center, which is the largest and most advanced seedling base in Guizhou, boasts four modern seedling fields covering over 70,000 square meters.

Key processes, from sowing to irrigation and grafting, are automated, improving germination rates, grafting survival rates, and seedling quality. The center's annual capacity is expected to reach 82 million seedlings in 2025, sufficient for 35,000 mu (2,333 hectares) of vegetable production.

In the high-standard farmlands of Huazhen town, a drone loaded with potassium fertilizer is performing ultra-low-altitude spraying on rice paddies. Guided by satellite positioning, the drone maintains a 30-centimeter flight height, ensuring the fertilizer is precisely attached to the rice leaves without damaging the crops or causing waste. In just one morning, over 50 mu of rice fields were sprayed, far surpassing the efficiency of 10 manual laborers.

By enhancing the full-chain digitalization of the Nanmudu and Nanjiang seedling breeding centers, Guiyang and Gui'an now produce over 100 million seedlings annually. Additionally, the region actively promotes Beidou application pilots for agricultural machinery, completing upgrades for 277 smart terminals. This full-process informatization management of high-standard vegetable bases has boosted productivity by 40 percent, earning recognition as a national model case for smart agriculture.