gringobingo|Across China: Sci-tech innovation empowers pear business in north China

TAIYUAN, June 22 (Xinhua) -- As usual, Zhang Qingfu opens an app on his mobile phone and gently taps it to start irrigating his pear trees, which cover more than 100 mu (about 6gringobingo.67 hectares) of land in Xixian County, north China's Shanxi Provincegringobingo.

"With the Internet of Things devices in the pear orchard, I can view data such as soil moisture on my phone, and remotely control irrigation and fertilization in different areas of the orchard. It's much easier than before," said Zhang, 60, who has been growing pears for over 40 years.

Zhang previously relied on manual irrigation for his orchard, but has benefitted from the new technologies and devices applied in Xixian, as part of the county's efforts to develop the pear growing industry.

Pear trees have been cultivated in Xixian for over 2,000 years. At present, Xixian has 230,000 mu of land dedicated to Yuluxiang pears -- a particular variety of the fruit -- making it one of the largest Yuluxiang-pear growing bases in China. There are 64 villages in the county that rely on pears as their primary business, accounting for 80 percent of the farmers' income.

Over recent years, the county has made efforts to improve the variety, quality and brand image of the pears, thus boosting the rural revitalization of the county and fattening the wallets of its residents.

In Xixian, a smart pear orchard spanning 500 mu has been developed in cooperation with the Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

In this smart orchard, every pear is assigned a unique QR code that enables monitoring of the entire growth process, from flowering to fruit development, including tracking watering schedules and detecting any cases of infestation.

"The QR code serves as an ID card, recording the growing process of a pear," said Wang Yibo, who works at the county's fruit industry center.

Moreover, Xixian has built a smart agriculture integration platform composed of 12 systems, including water-fertilizer integrated management, plant disease and insect monitoring, and monitoring and evaluation of cultivated land quality.

Thanks to the smart platform, pear farmers in the county have realized a range of digital operations in seedling selection, planting, pest control and meteorological analysis.

In recent years, Xixian's pear cultivation industry has also ridden the waves of e-commerce, gaining popularity not only in China but also the wider world.

According to Zhang Lizhou, general manager of a leading local e-commerce company, since 2020, the company's annual export volume of the Xixian Yuluxiang pears has increased by an annual rate of over 20 percent over the past years, while the export volume is expected to reach 480 tonnes this year.

Additionally, to make the Yuluxiang pears known to more people, Xixian has held various activities each year, such as tourism festivals and investment promotions, and has arranged for enterprises to participate in agricultural product exhibitions at home and abroad.■