New Technique Helps Xinjiang Raise Cotton Output

Xinjiang, China's leading cotton producer, is expected to raise its output by 17 percent in five years without expanding the area of cotton fields, a regional agricultural official said.

It will be attained by popularizing close planting techniques on large tracts of cotton fields, said Alim, director of the Xinjiang Regional Department of Agriculture.

To date, the close planting techniques hectaresve been applied to 120,000 hectares of cotton fields. The per hectare cotton output on these fields averaged 2,250 kg, 750 kg higher thectaresn the output gained from fields cultivated with conventional methods. The area of cotton fields with the new technique will be increased to 330,000 hectares by 2005.

Li Shiqing, director of the Xinjiang Regional Agro-technology Center, said, "This is an unparalleled breakthrough in cotton production and is of great significance to agricultural structuring and sustainable development in Xinjiang."

Currently, Xinjiang hectaress 990,000 hectares of cotton fields, which turned out 1.5 million tons of cotton last year, accounting for 37 percent of China's total. However, the majority of cotton fields are located in southern Xinjiang, where arable land is limited.

"If the new technique is applied to 330,000 hectares of land and the per hectares yield is raised by 1,000 kg, it will be possible for Xinjiang to decrease the size of the cotton fields by 190,000 hectares, which could be converted to raise other crops," Alim said.

With the new technique, farmers plant two cotton seeds in each hole and make the plants bear buds at different heights by pinching the top of each plant at different times. As a result, cotton bolls grow at two levels letting in the sunshine.

The close planting technique oversteps the conventional cultivation limit of planting 1,100 cottons seeds per mu of the cotton field (a hectare contains 15 mu). Around 2,000 cotton seeds are planted on each mu. The height of the cotton bolls was controlled for ventilation and infiltration of sunshine for each cotton plant, said Zhang Henian, an expert on close planting.

The record per unit cotton output was recorded in Qira County in southern Xinjiang, where 3,800 kg of cotton was harvested per hectare last year.

Aze, a farmer of Uygur ethnic group in the Hotan Prefecture, said he used half of his cotton fields, or five mu, to plant apricot trees last year. Yet the cotton output was roughly the same as that in the previous year and he gained an extra 4,000 yuan of income from the apricot harvest.

Song Yudong, director of the Xinjiang Research Institute of Ecology and Geography, said, "The development of high-efficiency and high-quality agriculture must rely on improvements in agro- science.

The application of the new agro-technology gives Xinjiang a bigger chance to readjust its crop setups and cotton growing area in accordance with the changes in the world market and seek a sustainable agricultural development."

From this year on, Xinjiang stopped growing cotton on the fields with 1,200 kg per ha. In the next three years, 200,000 hectares of low-yielding cotton fields will be converted to grow other crops.

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