Chinese province invests heavily in agricultural innovation

SHENYANG -- Liaoning, a province on China's agriculturally-rich Northeast Plain, has spent 82 million yuan ($12.5 million) in supporting scientific and technological innovation in the agricultural sector since 2019, authorities said.

The province has supported the Liaoning Academy of Agricultural Sciences in developing 10 main discipline clusters covering nearly 100 disciplines, according to the provincial department of finance.

The academy has a series of agricultural innovations to its credit including a new corn breed that has set an output record of 20.2 tons per hectare when grown in spring in China's northeastern region.

The province has also assigned nearly 400 agri-science personnel to work in 25 counties and districts in the areas of scientific and technological innovation, new variety and new technology demonstration, industry-research collaboration and training.

Dozens of county-level agricultural industries such as greenhouse vegetable production in Beizhen and mushroom farming in Qingyuan Manchu autonomous county have been formed, the department said in a press release.

With fertile soil and abundant waterways including Songhua and Nenjiang rivers, the Northeast Plain is a major agricultural base of China.