＂Qin Shu＂ fragrant Sanqin

Shaanxi Daily (11th edition, May 5, 2022)

On April 11th, Zhu Weibing (right), the person in charge of the base, and Liu Mengjun, an associate professor at the Agricultural College of Northwest A&F University, exchanged sweet potato seedling techniques at the seedling base of Yangling Golden Potato Seed Technology Co., Ltd..

April 15thWorkers are harvesting sweet potato seedlings in Tianxi Village, Rougu Town, Yangling District, Yangling Demonstration Zone.

■ The total planting area of sweet potato in Shaanxi is about 800,000 mu, and the yield per mu is about 2,000 kg.

■ After more than half a century, sweet potato breeding experts in our province have bred a series of new sweet potato varieties, among which the promotion area of "Qinshu No.5" accounts for about 80% of the total sweet potato planting area in our province.

■ Heichi Town, Heyang County, Weinan City, Ganguyi Town, Baota District, Yan ‘an City, Cuijiawan Town, Suide County, Yulin City, and Guo Wang Zhen, Fengxiang District, Baoji City, the four major sweet potato industry towns in our province are famous in the northwest.

Most people have a sweet potato complex-planting several ridges of sweet potato seedlings in farmland and digging sweet potatoes in autumn is really interesting; Take out a few sweet potatoes from the cellar and put them into the fire. The most primitive cooking method makes them delicious …

In fact, sweet potato is an exotic product. Since it was introduced to China for more than 400 years, it once became an important crop to replace people’s staple food, which provided food security for China’s population growth and played a great role in avoiding famine and disaster. The sweet potato buried deep in the soil still cherishes people’s deep memories, forming a unique sweet potato culture in China, which nourishes our lives to this day.

In recent years, the concept of diet balance has been deeply rooted in people’s hearts, and the "sweet potato fever" has risen again. Sweet potato, once used to fill the stomach, has become synonymous with health and nutrition. Driven by the large-scale, technical and green planting standards of sweet potato, the four major towns of sweet potato in our province are famous in the northwest, and the deep processing industry of sweet potato has a strong development momentum. Sweet potato not only brings sweetness to people, but also opens a way to get rich.

"Sweet potato fever" has risen again.

Yangchun March is not only the most beautiful season in the world, but also the season of cultivation and sowing. In this season of "planting melons and beans", Yangling, an agricultural city, entered the busiest time. From the beginning of April, customers who came to buy sweet potato seedlings in the sweet potato seedling base of Yangling Golden Potato Seed Technology Co., Ltd. were in an endless stream.

In recent years, the total planting area of sweet potatoes in our province is about 800,000 mu, mainly for edible commercial potatoes, and the yield per mu is about 2000 kg. Every year, about half of the sweet potatoes produced in Shaanxi are supplied to the local market, and the rest are sold to Gansu, Xinjiang, Ningxia and other places. Moreover, in order to ensure the variety of sweet potatoes in the market, Shaanxi also purchases local sweet potatoes from Shanxi, Henan and other places every year.

"Sweet potato contains a variety of nutrients, especially it is rich in lysine. Eating sweet potato with rice and flour can make the nutritional composition more comprehensive. Sweet potato is low in fat and heat energy, and contains nutrients that can regulate the acid-base balance of human body, inhibit cholesterol production, lower blood sugar level, and prevent sub-health and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. It can be called health food, longevity food and anticancer food. " Ren Yamei, an associate professor at the College of Food Science and Engineering, Northwest A&F University, introduced.

Shaanxi sweet potato has good quality and taste, which is very suitable for steaming and roasting, and it is often in short supply in the market. Driven by interests, every link of the sweet potato industry chain, such as seedling raising, planting, storage and processing, has become a "magic weapon" for people to increase their income and get rich.

On April 15th, farmers from Fufeng, Wugong and Ganxian came to the sweet potato seedling base in Tianxi Village, Rougu Town, Yangling District, Yangling Demonstration Zone to buy seedlings. In the fields, rows of greenhouses are warm and harmonious, and sweet potato seedlings are growing vigorously. "There are 18 sweet potato seedling greenhouses in Tianxi Village, and more than 10 million virus-free sweet potato seedlings are cultivated every year, which are mainly supplied to the surrounding sweet potato farmers." Liu Xinmin, head of Tianxi Village sweet potato seedling base, said.

"Driven by the sweet potato seedling industry and under the guidance of experts and professors from Northwest A&F University, there are 15 villagers in Tianxi Village developing 26 sweet potato seedling greenhouses, and the average annual income of sweet potato seedling farmers exceeds 100,000 yuan." Tian Xiaoxiong, secretary of the Party branch of Tianxi Village, said.

With the popularity of sweet potato, sweet potato storage has become a business. It is understood that about half of the sweet potatoes harvested in autumn in our province are directly listed, and some sweet potatoes are stored in earthen pits to ensure that they can be sold all year round, and can be supplied from October to March next year. Pit-stored sweet potatoes are listed during the Spring Festival, avoiding the low price period caused by the large supply of fresh potatoes in season, and most of them can sell at good prices.

In recent years, Shuguang Sweet Potato Professional Cooperative in Heichi Town, Heyang County has carried out in-depth development of sweet potatoes on the basis of developing fresh sweet potatoes, producing a series of products such as sweet potato flour, sweet potato vermicelli, sweet potato starch and sweet potato old sugar, and promoting the diversified development of sweet potato products.

Sweet potato love between two generations

In 1950s, Sheng Jialian, a Chinese sweet potato breeding expert, brought back sweet potato breeding resources from the United States and Japan, and gave some of them to Professor Niu Lianxing of Northwest Agricultural College (now Northwest A&F University). As a student of Professor Niu Lianxing, Zhu Junguang began to work on sweet potato breeding, and after more than half a century, he developed a series of new sweet potato varieties.

In the 1990s, a new sweet potato variety "Qinshu No.4" bred by Zhu Junguang and others was demonstrated and popularized in our province. Its outstanding feature is that it can be used for both steaming and starch processing, and farmers affectionately call it "market potato". In 2006, Zhu Junguang and others bred a new sweet potato variety "Qinshu No.5" and gradually popularized it. At present, the promotion area of "Qinshu No.5" accounts for about 80% of the total sweet potato planting area in our province.

During the sweet potato breeding, Zhu Junguang learned from the traditional sweet potato planting methods, such as oblique planting, direct planting and flat planting, and summed up a "horizontal improved cutting method" that is suitable for the local area and ensures survival. First, the sweet potato seedlings are inserted into the soil to take root, then the sweet potato seedlings are laid down and buried shallowly, and finally the long vines at the top of the sweet potato seedlings are exposed, and the sweet potato seedlings are deeply inserted to protect the seedlings and buried shallowly. This method can not only ensure the survival rate, but also effectively increase the potato yield.

After many years of practice and exploration, Zhu Junguang summed up a set of practical techniques for planting sweet potatoes suitable for farmers-"high ridge to grow big potatoes and raise big fish in deep water" means that sweet potatoes are suitable for ridge planting, and high yield can only be achieved by "eating and drinking well"; "A litter of ashes, sweet potatoes in piles" means that potash fertilizer should be the main fertilizer for sweet potatoes …

"Breeding work is hard and tiring, and you can’t make money. At the beginning, I didn’t want to do this. " Zhu Weibing said. In 1997, under the guidance of his father Zhu Junguang, Zhu Weibing "drilled" into the sweet potato breeding greenhouse. At that time, Zhu Junguang was well-known in the sweet potato breeding industry in China.

In 1998, Zhu Weibing began to develop market-oriented breeding of sweet potato seedlings on the basis of his father’s breeding of new sweet potato varieties. At that time, Zhu Weibing had only two greenhouses for seedling raising, and about 400,000 sweet potato seedlings were sold every year. At that time, a farmer in Famen Town, Fufeng County purchased "Qinshu No.4" sweet potato seedlings from Zhu Weibing and planted them. In that year, he earned more than 6,000 yuan by selling steamed sweet potatoes.

High-quality sweet potato seedlings bring real money to farmers. At this time, Zhu Weibing felt that the market-oriented breeding of sweet potato seedlings had great prospects. Around 2000, Zhu Weibing established a seed company, specializing in sweet potato seedling raising.

How to breed high-quality sweet potato seedlings in batches? Zhu Weibing took a lot of thought. First, let the seed potatoes sleep "Simmons", combine the electric hotbed with the solar greenhouse, and adopt the technology of centralized germination and separate bed potato arrangement to make the sweet potato seedling grow quickly and economically. The second is to let the seed potatoes eat "western food", create soilless sweet potato seedlings, and use all-organic nutrient fertilization technology to solve the problems of easy pollution of nutrient solution for hydroponic seedlings and the prevalence of soil-borne diseases in traditional seedlings. Thirdly, the virus-free technology is combined with multi-stage, rapid and efficient seedling raising methods to effectively improve the propagation coefficient of sweet potato seedlings.

Today, Zhu Weibing has 28 sweet potato seedling greenhouses, and about 10 million sweet potato seedlings are bred every year, which are mainly supplied to large sweet potato growers in the province. "Sweet potatoes have the habit of asexual reproduction, so the income from seedling breeding is limited. We are considering more to promote the excellent varieties of sweet potatoes on a large scale, so that more farmers can benefit from it. " Zhu Weibing said frankly.

The regional characteristics of "Qin Shu"

Today’s sweet potato has become a spice in people’s lives. At present, sweet potatoes are distributed in Guanzhong, northern Shaanxi and southern Shaanxi. Some sweet potatoes in northern Shaanxi are soft and sweet varieties. The dried sweet potatoes in Guanzhong are delicious and suitable for steaming and roasting. The sweet potatoes in southern Shaanxi are mainly used to produce starch and feed. There are different varieties and processing channels of sweet potato in northern and southern Shaanxi, and farmers’ cognition of sweet potato is also different.

In recent years, our province has vigorously developed the sweet potato planting industry, and has formed four major sweet potato industry towns: Heichi Town, Heyang County, Weinan City; Ganguyi Town, Baota District, Yan ‘an City; Cuijiawan Town, Suide County, Yulin City; and Guowang Town, Fengxiang District, Baoji City. The sweet potato planting industry has gradually changed from decentralized operation to large-scale, technical and green.

On April 17th, in the planting base of Jinshuyuan Agricultural Cooperative in Guowang Village, Wang Zhen, Fengxiang District, Zhang Jianke, the person in charge, was leading the workers to plant sweet potato seedlings. In 2020, Zhang Jianke and his partners established the Golden Potato Garden Agricultural Cooperative, and accumulated 120 mu of land to grow sweet potatoes.

"Every year, the cooperative’s commodity sweet potato output is more than 200,000 kilograms. In the sweet potato harvest season, merchants parked their trucks on the ground to grab the goods. This year, the cooperative plans to introduce a sweet potato vermicelli processing factory to further process some sweet potatoes to increase profits. " Zhang Jianke said.

At present, Wang Zhen has planted 15,000 mu of sweet potato, and radiation has driven the surrounding towns and villages to develop 30,000 mu of sweet potato planting. "Guo Wang Zhen has formed an integrated industrial chain of sweet potato breeding, planting and deep processing. In the next step, we plan to introduce sweet potato starch processing plants, pet feed factories and other enterprises to further enlarge and strengthen the sweet potato industry and drive the people to increase their income and get rich. " Xing Wenrang, vice mayor of Guo Wang Zhen, said.

It has become a trend to plant sweet potatoes in contiguous areas in our province, and behind the large-scale planting is the effective application of new technologies and new machinery. In mid-April, in the sweet potato planting base in Ganguyi Town, Baota District, farmers were turning over the ground and ridging to prepare for planting sweet potatoes. "The sweet potato planting area in Ganguyi Town is about 10,000 mu. The sweet potato planting base is equipped with machinery such as rotary tillage, ridging, deep ploughing, film mulching and harvesting. Farmers can also modify the machinery according to actual needs, and the sweet potato industry is fully mechanized from planting to harvesting." Guo Qiping, mayor of Ganguyi Town, said.

In 2019, Ganguyi Town cooperated with Northwest A&F University in "Industry-University-Research" to build the first town-level sweet potato science and technology expert compound in the province, and hired technical experts to take the pulse for the development of sweet potato industry in Ganguyi Town. In order to solve the problem of quality degradation caused by long planting time of local sweet potatoes, experts from Ganguyi Town jointly detoxified local sweet potato seedlings, which fundamentally solved the problem of productivity decline and quality degradation of sweet potatoes.

With the change of people’s consumption concept, healthy nutrition has become one of the important standards of food production and processing. During the development of sweet potato industry, Heichi Town vigorously promoted the use of organic biological fertilizer, bacterial fertilizer and physical pest control measures to ensure the green and healthy sweet potato products. Heichi Town also signed an eco-agricultural technical service agreement with scientific research institutes to carry out green ecological sweet potato production technology experiment and demonstration.

Original link: https://esb.sxdaily.com.cn/PC/content/202205/05/content _ 782257.html.