Jinning district of SW China's Yunnan boosts floral industry through infusion of technology

By introducing science and technology improvements, Jinning district of Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, has provided a boost to its floral industry, generating greater wealth for local people.

Home to a cultivation area of 61,000 mu (about 4,066.67 hectares), the district produces 5 billion stems of fresh-cut flowers annually, which accounts for over half of the total amount in China. With an output value of 3.2 billion yuan (about $475.84 million), the industry provides job opportunities for over one fifth of the total population in the district.

A worker packs fresh flowers at a flower cooperative in Jinning district, Kunming, Yunnan Province, on April 2, 2020. (Photo/Xinhua)

“Over the past three decades, Jinning started from scratch and has shaped up to be a core producing area for cut flowers in Yunnan and China,” said Pu Junhao, head of the agriculture and rural affairs bureau for the district.

The flowers here once suffered from unpredictable quality due to a lack of technology, as well as an absence of proper management and planting modes, and therefore could not be sold at a good market price. In recent years, the district has improved the locality’s planting pattern by adopting a substrate soilless culture on over 10,000 mu of land.

“Compared to conventional soil cultivation, the new mode has increased the yield per mu from around 50,000 stems to some 150,000 stems. The proportion of high-quality flowers has grown from 30 percent to about 70 percent. The output value per mu, which used to stand at between 30,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan, has reached a maximum of 200,000 yuan,” introduced Pu.

Covering an area of 10,000 square meters, an eye-catching glass greenhouse of a modern agricultural development company in the downtown area of Jinning shows where the future of the floral industry lies.

According to Li Yunju, deputy general manager of the company, the greenhouse, which is actually a science and technology innovation center, aims to crack the industry’s many conundrums, offering a full package of techniques and solutions while facilitating the upgrading of the overall industry.

The huge greenhouse incorporates experimental fields for plant propagation, potted flowers, cut flowers, vertical gardening supported by artificial intelligence, and an artificial climate laboratory. These technologies have greatly improved the level of efficiency, reduced labor costs and enhanced the quality of the flowers. For example, 186,000 stems of plants can be cultivated at one time, and 3.35 million stems can be cultivated annually through the use of different equipment. Moreover, 5,000 pots of substrate can be filled every hour, equivalent to the work efficiency of 50 workers.

In Qingshuihe village of Jinning, a team headed by Dr. Li Shubin from the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, along with employees from a local horticulture company, have made breakthroughs in the germplasm of the Chinese rose.

Almost half of all Chinese roses, the biggest source of cut flowers in China and the world, come from Jinning. But the district was once highly dependent on imported seedlings, which means that the farmers had to pay a premium for the patent, according to Li.

“The germplasm carries strategic significance for the industry,” Li observed. He added that China has an abundance of germplasms for Chinese roses. Yunnan, in particular, is home to one fifth of the germplasms for Chinese roses in the world, most of which are endemic to the province.

To tap the potential of China’s rich resources for the flower, Li and his team have travelled the length and breadth of the country to collect over 2,000 samples of germplasms for Chinese roses, including 60 samples of germplasms from ancient Chinese roses, over 1,000 from modern varieties and some from wild roses, having accumulated some 100,000 items to be used as breeding materials. In addition, they spent seven years building a germplasm bank for Chinese roses in the village.

Li and his team have cultivated about a dozen new species of Chinese roses, which were recognized by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration. Resistant to diseases and pests, these new species can survive in hot and frigid conditions, need less time and effort to look after, and are therefore regarded as being environmentally-friendly varieties of Chinese roses. Every year, the sales volume for the newly-selected seedlings now reaches nearly 10 million yuan.

So far, Jinning boasts 348 flower brands, with some rose species included in the top 10 flower species of Yunnan. Home to 14 high-standard cultivation demonstration zones and 11 processing plants, the district is striving to increase the comprehensive output value of the industry and deal with agricultural pollution from non-point sources over the next five years.

“Jinning’s efforts in improving the planting pattern and breaking the bottlenecks in germplasms have contributed to the rural development of the district while generating wealth for the farmers,” remarked Pu.