Written by: Ding Xuezhen
Posted on: July 05, 2018 | 
| 中文
Hybrid rice in Pakistan (Source: Dawn News)
In May this year, Pakistan's hybrid rice was exported to a third-party market for the first time. One hundred tons of heat-tolerant hybrid rice seeds produced in Pakistan, under the help of the team headed by Chinese scientist Yuan Longping, were sold to the Philippines. It was the first export of its kind since Pakistan began experimenting with hybrid rice technology over a decade ago. With the advancement of ‘The Belt and Road Initiative,’ agricultural cooperation between China and Pakistan continues to deepen in sound development.
The economic survey of the 2016 - 2017 fiscal year, issued by Ministry of Finance of Pakistan, shows that agriculture contributed to nearly 1/5thof the GDP, and more than 40% of the labor force in the country was engaged in agricultural production. Agriculture is the lifeline of Pakistan, and is very important for a developing national economy. However, methods to increase production have been plaguing Pakistani agricultural scientists for quite some time.
In 1999, under the direction of the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, Yuan Long Ping High-Tech Agriculture Co., Ltd. (referred to as Long Ping High-Tech) and Pakistan Guard Agricultural Research and Services Company signed a cooperative agreement on the joint development of hybrid rice in Pakistan. Since the two countries formally launched a technical cooperation on hybrid rice in 2002, China has provided training for more than 100 Pakistani experts by holding hybrid rice technical training sessions in China and Pakistan, which has effectively enhanced their understanding of China's agricultural development experience, and promoted exchanges of experts and talents between the two sides.
Shahzad Ali Malik, chief executive officer of Guard Agricultural Research and Services said, “The first export of hybrid rice produced in Pakistan exported to a third-party market is a tangible proof of how Pakistan-China agricultural cooperation promoted the development of Pakistan's agriculture. This not only brings new opportunities to Pakistan's agriculture, but also contributes greatly to our economic growth.”
Malik has been to China many times, to visit the “Father of Hybrid Rice,” Professor Yuan Longping. “The fact that Pakistan can export hybrid rice today cannot be separated from the encouragement and guidance of Yuan Longping.”
Statistics show that the planting area of rice in Pakistan is about 2.7 million hectares, but the average yield per hectare is only 2.5 tons, due to low popularization rate of hybrid rice. Backward farming practices are one of the causes of low production.
Therefore, to promote hybrid rice in Pakistan, it is more important to change the conventional farming concept of the locals. In 2015, Cai Jun, an expert of rice cultivation of Long Ping High-Tech was dispatched to Sumro Gulati, Sindh, Pakistan, to promote hybrid rice technology. At first, the local people were dubious about his method.The traditional farming concept of relying on“heaven”for food made it impossible for them to understand why Cai Jun's requirement was so “harsh.”
Cai Jun told the locals about artificial pollination, fertilizer, irrigation management and weeding by demonstrating it himself. In order to facilitate the locals’ understanding, Chinese experts combined the mechanized planting methods prevailing in Pakistan in recent years, with traditional approaches, and gradually helped the farmers to change their planting ways through planting demonstrations plus exploration and innovation.
Southern Pakistan is located in the tropics. During the rice planting period, the average temperature in Sindh is over 30 ?. Nevertheless, at important farming times, such as pollination, Cai Jun and his colleagues often spent five or six hours in a row on field explanation and demonstration.
From sowing, rice seedling management, transplanting, field management to the subsequent flowering forecast, artificial pollination and harvesting; Chinese experts used a set of advanced cultivation concepts, which "subverted" the local farmers' cognition of rice planting. The per mu yield of more than 3000 mu of rice, increased from 500 kg to 900 kg (gross weight). The tangible achievements have sincerely convinced the local farmers.
In more than ten years, as Chinese hybrid rice ‘settled’ and then ‘took root’ in Pakistan, China's agricultural high-tech went global through training Pakistani agricultural technical personnel and guaranteeing food security in Pakistan. Huang Dahui, deputy director of the International Training Institute of Long Ping High-Tech, said that the company’s next goal is to further expand planting areas and increase yield per unit on the basis of localization of hybrid rice seed production. “As an agricultural researcher, I am very pleased to see the export of Pakistan’s hybrid rice, because we are approaching Professor Yuan Longping’s dream of ‘developing hybrid rice for the benefit of people across the world.’
Translated by Xu Donglin
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