The modern agricultural industrial park in Jiaozhou, a county-level city in Qingdao, Shandong province, has become an important player in promoting rural vitalization and boosting agricultural modernization, local media reported.

The park, centered around Jiaoxi subdistrict, involves five towns and subdistricts including Jiaolai, Yanghe, Licha, and Pujie, and forms a potato production aggregation area.

The park is designed to enhance the quality and efficiency of the potato industry in the city and promote the high-efficiency development of modern agriculture, said local officials.

A researcher cultivates potato seedlings in Jiaozhou, Shandong province. [Photo/Dazhong News]

In recent years, Jiaozhou has been ramping up efforts to promote the digitalization of agriculture, utilizing technological innovation to drive the upgrading of the agricultural industry and inject new vitality into the development of modern agriculture.

Through close cooperation with research institutes, Jiaozhou has strengthened the cultivation of potato seedlings, achieving an integration of production, education, research, and application and guiding the sustainable and healthy development of the potato industry.

Since 2022, the Jiaozhou modern agricultural industrial park has been collaborating with Qingdao Agricultural University to carry out potato breeding work, promoting large-scale, standardized, and technological production of potatoes. In doing so it has advanced the development and industrial operation of farmers' professional cooperative organizations.

Farmers harvest potatoes in Jiaozhou, Shandong province. [Photo/Dazhong News]

It is expected that by 2024, the superior potato seedlings bred here will be supplied to the Jiaozhou market, bringing real benefits to a wide range of growers.

In 2022, the total output value of the Jiaozhou modern agriculture industrial park reached 2.45 billion yuan ($337.5 million). Its potato planting area accounts for 37.5 percent of the total potato planting area in Qingdao, and its annual potato output is about 400,000 metric tons, accounting for 26.8 percent of the city's total.

A farmer shows the freshly harvested potatoes in Jiaozhou. [Photo/Dazhong News]