China Developing New Strain of WheatA new strain of wheat with a 40-kilogram output per hectare, now under research, is expected to be put into production within the next five years.The country plans to plant 200,000 hectares of the new strain of wheat by 2005 as an experimental step, said Xiao Shihe, an expert with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The new strain is expected to not only yield high output but also high-quality products that hit the country's highest standard of grain, he added. Major wheat-growing provinces, such as Shandong, Hebei and Henan provinces in north and east China, will be first selected as experimental spots to grow the new wheat strain. And China intends to come up with a system integrating the production of the new wheat strain with the storage, transportation and processing sectors in these regions, as the government now is working to streamline the agricultural sector. Xiao said that experts have developed several similar strains of wheat, of which some can yield about 66 kilograms per hectare at most by experiment. However, it still needs improvement for the application. |
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