I saw everything

Chapter 39 Salt-alkali Land

Left Shuya's temporary laboratory.

Jiang Miao came to his experimental greenhouse alone.

Ke Yong and another bodyguard were sitting under a parasol not far away. They looked very relaxed, but they were actually secretly observing their surroundings vigilantly, especially the nearby intersections that led to the laboratory and experimental greenhouse.

Next to the two people's parasols were Li Wenna and another female bodyguard. They were in the same group with Shuya.

Among them, Li Wenna sat at the table, tapping the laptop keyboard with her hands from time to time, handling some work.

Although she is Shuya's secretary, she still has to help the farm deal with some things, especially some work related to communication with the headquarters, which Lu Weibin handed over to Li Wenna.

Jiang Miao was checking various crops in his own experimental greenhouse.

A lot of crops have been planted there.

Including ginseng fruit (melon eggplant), alfalfa, soybeans, tomatoes, cucumbers, and rice.

These greenhouses have a total arable area of ​​5 acres.

Among them, tomatoes, ginseng fruit, cucumbers and soybeans have already bloomed and borne fruit.

Alfalfa is growing extremely lushly and the rice is still heading.

Two acres of land were transformed by him into artificial saline-alkali land, which was divided into five types of saline-alkali land to simulate mild saline-alkali land, moderate saline-alkali land, severe saline-alkali land, marine transgressive saline-alkali land, and inland saline-alkali land.

These saline-alkali experimental fields are planted with alfalfa, soybeans and rice.

However, growth conditions vary.

Although Jiang Miao improved the new variety through identification panels and breeding technology, the new variety will also not adapt to the local climate.

You know, in order to screen out suitable new varieties, he consumed a full 3 tons of non-GMO soybeans, and then selected 3 valuable genetically mutated varieties from these 37 tons of genetically mutated soybean seeds.

The same goes for other crops such as rice and alfalfa.

If we rely on traditional breeding models, it will take at least three to five years to select useful varieties from three tons of genetically mutated seeds.

But Jiang Miao can shorten this time to a few weeks.

Only those gene mutation varieties that are initially screened out are qualified as varieties for planting experiments.

The soybeans, alfalfa and rice in these experimental fields are excellent varieties carefully selected from tens of thousands of mutations.

"DD24 cannot adapt to high potassium?" Jiang Miao recorded the situation of this variety in his notebook using symbols and words that only he could understand.

Walking through the experimental field of DD24 soybeans.

The next few soybean varieties all performed poorly.

Some soybeans can tolerate salinity but not drought;
Some are drought resistant but not disease resistant;
Some of them have good other performances, but their output is low.

Jiang Miao squatted down in front of the experimental field marked with DD28 and looked at the edamame pods under the branches: "DD28 is a good variety. It is not only resistant to high-salinity seawater, but also resistant to diseases and insects. Moreover, the branches are relatively strong, the resistance to lodging is good, and the yield is also quite good..."

He roughly estimated the yield of this soybean plant. If converted into yield per mu, it would be about 183 kilograms per mu.

The yield per acre is very high.

Because the management of this experimental field is very extensive and no large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides are used, it is absolutely terrifying to be able to achieve this level of yield per mu.

Of course, the soybean yield per mu in some parts of the country can also reach very high levels.

For example, the yield per mu of some soybean fields in the Western Region Production Corps can reach about 230 kilograms, but the premise of this yield is good field management, rational use of fertilizers and pesticides, and good water conservancy to achieve this level.

Similarly, the average yield per mu of genetically modified soybeans in the Mississippi River in America can reach about 220 kilograms. The problem is that genetically modified soybeans have problems with seed safety, gene contamination, and safety sensitivity.

The DD28 variety carefully selected by Jiang Miao can be directly irrigated with seawater or salt water from inland lakes. Under extensive management, it can still achieve a yield of 183 kilograms per mu. This is definitely a variety with great potential.

It’s a pity that DD28 is not very cold-resistant and cannot withstand temperatures below 15 degrees Celsius.

Jiang Miao was not disappointed because this was only the first generation variety and he could continue to improve it based on DD28. He could even consider opening up new experimental fields in the coastal saline-alkali land of the Bohai Bay.

However, he has no intention of going north for the time being.

On the one hand, he cannot be too hasty. He just mastered the artificial breeding technology of eels last year, and then cultivated several new varieties of strawberries. If he can come up with such an excellent soybean variety, it will easily attract attention.

On the other hand, of course, Hailufeng Company's financial resources are not strong enough and it cannot make large-scale investments. If it launches a new variety of soybeans at this time, ordinary growers may not buy it, which is not conducive to promotion.

After all, the new varieties that Jiang Miao developed are all salt- and alkali-tolerant varieties. For ordinary farmland, the difference between planting salt- and alkali-tolerant varieties and planting other varieties is actually not that big.

The alfalfa and rice he cultivated were both salt-tolerant and drought-tolerant varieties.

The reason why we choose salt-alkali and drought-resistant materials is because a large part of the land in the country is saline-alkali land.

The scale of saline-alkali land in China has reached 9913 million hectares, equivalent to 14 billion mu, almost reaching the level of one mu of saline-alkali land per capita.

Among them, 1.5 million mu of saline-alkali land has the potential for transformation, which is also the research direction of many domestic agricultural research institutions.

However, the saline-alkali land that is easy to transform is not Jiang Miao's target. The saline-alkali land he is interested in is the remaining more than one billion mu of saline-alkali land that is difficult to transform, because salt-alkali and drought-resistant varieties can be planted directly on these saline-alkali lands without the need for special soil improvement.

Even if one-third of the saline-alkali land can be used for cultivation, it would be an extremely significant breakthrough.

The scale of soybean imports from abroad was only about 100 million tons at its peak.

As long as one-third of the saline-alkali land is available for planting, the planting area can reach about 4.3 million mu. If DD28 is planted in all of it, the yield per mu can reach 183 kilograms. 4.3 million mu of saline-alkali land can produce 7869 million tons of soybeans.

Combined with the country's existing soybean production capacity, it can almost completely replace the import share.

Of course, it is impossible to completely replace imports.

After all, if the country stops importing at all, the global soybean market will inevitably collapse in an instant. At that time, not only will the farmers in America suffer heavy losses, but the farmers and agricultural companies in South American countries and the Russians will also be in trouble.

What's more, it will be difficult to reduce the trade deficit without importing soybeans, which will make other countries more reluctant to purchase domestic industrial products, thus further isolating the global economy and leading to trade protectionism.

Therefore, even if Jiang Miao launches better salt- and alkali-tolerant soybeans, the estimated planting area will not exceed 100 million mu.

If the area exceeds this amount, it will be necessary to reduce the import volume of foreign soybeans by more than 2000 million tons, which will inevitably reduce the export quota of some regions.

This impact will have serious chain reactions.

Originally, others could only make money by exporting agricultural products and minerals. Now, the annual import of bulk commodities of over 100 million tons has been cut all at once. Without foreign exchange earnings, others naturally have no money to import industrial products.

So in this case, the authorities will take into account the overall situation of the global economy. Jiang Miao's new variety of soybeans will only become a strategic reserve technology, and will not be fully promoted for planting unless it is absolutely necessary.

It is estimated that they will plant tens of millions of acres first, taking the opportunity to suppress the arrogance of the four major grain traders ABCD, suppress the price of soybeans, and then continue to maintain the scale of soybean imports.

There is no way. The domestic industrial chain is too terrible, covering almost all types of industrial industries.

In this case, it is necessary to ensure that there is enough market for industrial products to absorb this production capacity, so the size of the trade deficit must be controlled to prevent other countries from becoming too poor.

Otherwise, with a trade deficit of tens of billions or hundreds of billions every year, we are not America and cannot print money with nuclear power. There will definitely be a day when we can no longer bear it.

Maintaining the scale of imports is a means of balancing the trade deficit.

(End of this chapter)