China is building an innovation center to study and utilize saline-alkali land with a focus on conducting observation of the soil, vegetation, groundwater and climate across the country to provide data support for land management and utilization, according to Shandong Provincial Department of Science and Technology.

"China is the third-largest country in the world in terms of the distribution of saline-alkali land, with approximately 36.67 million hectares of usable saline-alkali land resources of various types, which presents enormous development potential," Liang Kailong, deputy director of the department, said at a news conference on Monday.

The headquarters of the center is at the Agricultural High-tech Industrial Demonstration Area of the Yellow River Delta in Dongying, Shandong province, while sub-centers will be set up in Changchun, Jilin province, for soda-containing land; in Changji, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, for arid land; and in Handan, Hebei province, for land in which salt is sporadically scattered.

In addition, 16 stations will be built in cities including Daqing in Heilongjiang province, Yinchuan in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Bayannuur in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Kashgar in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to carry out the experiments and applications of integrated technology.

In the near future, the center aims to resolve a series of critical core issues on the biological breeding of salt-tolerant crops and improve the quality of saline-alkali land between 2023 and 2025.

It will cultivate more than 80 new salt-tolerant strains of crops, including grains, oilseeds, forage, and economic crops over the next three years, and plant these new cultivated crops on 2 million hectares of land, Liang said.

The center will also improve the quality of over 866,660 hectares of salt-containing arable land by means such as efficient use of water sources.

To achieve the aims, 50 innovation teams of 18 relevant research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences will participate in the center's major tasks of biological breeding, increasing production capacity and ecological utilization of the land, said Yi Keke, deputy director of the Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The center is supported by 18 domestic universities, research institutes and enterprises including China Agricultural University and the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

These organizations have strength in innovation and development of saline-alkali land agriculture, said Bi Jianming, deputy director of the management committee of the Agricultural High-tech Industrial Demonstration Area of the Yellow River Delta.