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Guangdong Increases Spending on Promotion of Agro-technology
The prosperous Chinese province of Guangdong will spend 312 million yuan (US$37.59 million) in construction of a province-wide network to help spread agro-technology during the next five years.
A local official in charge of agricultural work explained that the move is designed to increase the contribution by scientific progress to the province's local economic development to 60 percent of the total and enable the province to attain the standards of moderately developed countries by the year of 2010.
According to the officials, in the past decades, the province has introduced 1,500 improved varieties of crop from outside Guangdong, 300 of which have been popularized among farmers, and 70 percent of the province's arable farmland has been sown with improved seed varieties.
More than 150 new technologies have been applied to farming and science and technology have contributed 46 percent to the province's agricultural development.
With the investment, the province will build a center for introduction and improvement of fine crop seeds, an institute for supervision and examination of the quality of crop seeds, four provincial-level hybrid rice propagation centers, and 19 regional centers for supplying improved seed varieties.
The province will also upgrade 50 county-level centers for the popularization of improved crop seed varieties and another 100 sub-centers for spreading of agro-technology at township level.
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