A paddy field in Dongying, Shandong province. [Photo/IC]

The Yellow River Delta Agricultural High-tech Industrial Demonstration Zone in Shandong province has become a testing field for a variety of innovative agricultural machineries, which will greatly boost the agricultural development of saline-alkali land.

Jointly established by the demonstration zone and Qingdao Agricultural University, the Yellow River Delta Intelligent Agricultural Machinery Equipment Industry Research Institute has been dedicated to research and development of agricultural machinery for mechanized operations on saline-alkali land.

To date, the institute has developed a variety of agricultural machineries specially for saline-alkali soils such as power-driven rakes.

Soil hardening caused by the long-term accumulation of soluble salts on the soil surface has always been a challenge for the utilization of saline-alkali land. These power-driven rakes developed by the institute are able to plow and level 44 mu (2.93 hectares) of saline-alkali land in three hours. In the past, it took a rotary tiller equipped with a 240-horsepower tractor eight to nine hours to complete the task.

The institute has also developed intelligent cloud-based breeding machine for precise sowing on the saline-alkali land, among others.

To transform innovative technologies into real productivity, the institute has collaborated with 16 units to launch the implementation of a major scientific and technological innovation and production project that integrates and transforms urgently needed technologies for intelligent agricultural machinery equipment in saline-alkali soil.

Since the establishment of the institute, more than 50 companies have completed experimental verification and testing of more than 120 types of agricultural machinery equipment and components on 10,000 mu of test fields in the demonstration zone.