Nation supports Kazakh farming

Chinese side helps build greenhouses in innovation park, providing seeds and technologies

Du Shuangshe, farmer from Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, said he is looking forward to seeing the greenhouse-grown tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers produced at the China-Kazakhstan Modern Agriculture Innovation Park in Turgen, a village in the Almaty region of Kazakhstan.

One of Du’s major responsibilities is to select the best seeds introduced from China that can survive the chilly winters of Kazakhstan. With over 20 years of experience in vegetable planting, Du said he hopes to show local farmers how to grow vegetables in a greenhouse and share his know-how with them.

“Local farmers rarely take good care of vegetables and crops after sowing. They leave tomatoes growing in the field without building trellises to support the plant’s sprawling vines and heavy fruit. We want to help them improve their planting patterns by showing them our way of farming,” he said.

State-owned Yangling Modern Agriculture Demonstration Park Development and Construction Co Ltd runs the agriculture innovation park. It a is building three greenhouses in addition to experimenting with the introduction of 45 varieties of crops from China to Kazakhstan.

The crops, including wheat, corn and soybeans, are classified into six types. Agricultural technicians from Yangling district of Xianyang, Shaanxi province, chose seeds from certain areas of China that have a similar climate and soil conditions to Kazakhstan’s.

The technicians have worked at the agriculture innovation park since 2015, recording the crops’ growth status and comparing their performance with their local counterparts annually. They observe their disease and drought resistance, and productivity, to identify betterperforming varieties.

So far, WW-5, a variety of wheat introduced during the year 2017-18, has shown prominent features of rust and drought resistance, as well as a high yield. Its output reached 4,815 kilograms per hectare, 44 percent higher than the yield of local varieties.

In the year 2015-16, the P2 variety of soybean also bore more soybean pods and larger seeds, yielding 3,487.5 kg per hectare, 33 percent higher than the production of local varieties.

To promote agricultural technology cooperation between China and Kazakhstan, the administrative commission of the Yangling agricultural high-tech industries demonstration zone signed an agreement with the International Fund Integration of Kazakhstan in May Du Shuangshe, Manshuk Zhexembekova,

Local farmers rarely take good care of vegetables and crops after sowing ... We want to help them improve their planting patterns by showing them our way of farming.” a farmer from Shaanxi province The greatest benefit of our cooperation is that we can learn advanced agriculture technologies and knowledge.” manager of Integrachia-Turgen