Technology Empowers Daming to Build a Golden "Garlic" Strategy for Agricultural Development

When people mention garlic, Jinxiang in Shandong Province, known as the "Hometown of Chinese Garlic", always comes to mind first. However, it is little known that major garlic-producing areas across the country, such as Jinxiang in Shandong, Qi County in Henan, and Pizhou in Jiangsu, make special trips to Daming County in Handan every year to purchase garlic seeds. This land, nestled at the junction of Hebei, Shandong and Henan provinces, is not only the "birthplace" of millions of mu of garlic nationwide, but also meticulously polishes the "core chip" of high-quality Chinese garlic with the support of technology, making Daming garlic seeds an important driving force for rural revitalization.

Daming County has a long history and profound foundation in garlic cultivation, with a stable annual planting area of over 130,000 mu. The average yield per mu is 350 kilograms of garlic sprouts and 1,400 kilograms of dried garlic bulbs (mainly used as garlic seeds). Among them, five towns including Wandi, Huangjindi, Hongmiao, Yingzhen and Jintan are the core garlic-producing areas, with their planting area and total output ranking first in Hebei Province. The garlic industry has become the core engine for increasing farmers' income and promoting rural revitalization locally.

"The five major garlic-producing towns including Wandi and Yingzhen are located in the triangular area formed by the alluvial deposits of the Zhanghe and Weihe rivers, with compact silt, fertile soil, high organic matter content and complete minerals in the soil, coupled with high-quality water resources. These unique natural conditions have nurtured high-quality products centered on purple-skinned garlic," explained Xing Weigang, second-level chief staff member of the Association for Science and Technology of Daming County. With outstanding advantages such as high allicin content, good storage and transportation resistance, and strong disease resistance, more than 75% of Daming's garlic output is supplied as seeds to all parts of the country, making Daming a representative high-quality garlic seed production base in northern China and establishing its unique position in the national garlic industry.

However, behind this characteristic industry card, there are also hidden worries for development. "Garlic seeds are Daming's golden brand, but with long-term development, traditional advantages have gradually weakened, and the problem of variety degradation has become increasingly prominent," said Xi Gangqiang, general manager of Daming Jiete Jintian Agricultural Technology Service Co., Ltd. frankly. With the extension of planting years, some plots have encountered problems such as soil compaction and insufficient fertility, and coupled with the troubles of garlic root maggots, thrips and other diseases and insect pests, the sustainable development of the garlic industry is facing severe challenges.

As a provincial-level agricultural socialized service organization, Jiete Jintian Company has already taken the initiative to escort the industrial development. The company has integrated 108 agricultural machinery, 164 UAVs for plant protection, and 7 helicopters for unified prevention and control teams, building a comprehensive and modern agricultural service system. It has the capability to complete plant protection joint prevention and unified prevention and control operations on 1.2 million mu of cultivated land in Daming County within a week. In the cold storage of the sprouted garlic yellow garlic base it serves, 3,000 tons of sprouted garlic yellow garlic are in short supply all year round, and orders for next year have reached 16,000 tons. It has laid a solid foundation for improving the quality and efficiency of the garlic industry with large-scale and professional services.

In Xi Gangqiang's view, in addition to variety degradation, non-standard planting technical regulations are also a key bottleneck restricting industrial development. "Commercial garlic pursues large and plump bulbs, while garlic seeds emphasize uniform size. The requirements for planting density and field management between the two are completely different, and scientific and reasonable technical regulations must be used as support," he said, pointing out the pain point of insufficient standardization in Daming's garlic industry accurately.

Seeds are the chips of agriculture, and garlic seeds are the "chips" of the garlic industry. Faced with the bottlenecks in industrial development, technological empowerment has become the key grasp to break through the predicament. Recently, the Doctoral Innovation Station of Daming Jiete Jintian Agricultural Technology Service Co., Ltd. was officially established, injecting strong scientific and technological vitality into the high-quality development of the garlic industry, and also making Xi Gangqiang, who has been worried about industrial development, relax his brows.

The doctoral innovation station is led by Dr. Wang Xing, vice dean of the College of Landscape and Ecological Engineering of Hebei University of Engineering. Wang Xing has long been a "frequent visitor" to Daming's garlic industry, shuttling between the campus and the fields all year round to diagnose problems and solve difficulties for industrial development. "Garlic is an important raw material for the large health food industry cluster. Its quality depends on both high-quality disease-resistant and high-yield varieties, and the whole-process biological agriculture and organic farming cultivation techniques," Wang Xing explained the core path for the high-quality development of the garlic industry. In his view, focusing on the screening of new garlic varieties and the experimental demonstration of biotechnology is the key to promoting industrial upgrading.

The College of Landscape and Ecological Engineering of Hebei University of Engineering has strong strength, with a gathering of experts in garlic cultivation, green prevention and control of diseases and insect pests, breeding, tissue culture seedling propagation and other fields, and also has precious germplasm resources such as garlic parent stock seeds. These unique advantages have laid a solid foundation for the orderly operation of the doctoral innovation station. "Our goal is very clear - to make garlic grow better, with higher quality and greater benefits," Wang Xing outlined a clear technical roadmap. In addition to screening high-quality new garlic varieties, the team will also focus on promoting advanced technical regulations such as water and fertilizer management and efficient cultivation, green prevention and control of diseases and insect pests, soil formula fertilization, and integration of water and fertilizer, to standardize the planting links in an all-round way.

On October 24th, in the experimental field of the College of Landscape and Ecological Engineering of Hebei University of Engineering, more than a dozen ridges of garlic seedlings had broken through the plastic film and sprouted green shoots, growing vigorously. "Each ridge is planted with different new garlic varieties. Here, we not only carry out variety comparison experiments, but also conduct pilot applications of biodegradable plastic film simultaneously," Wang Xing pointed to the black plastic film in the field and introduced that these fully biodegradable plastic films can naturally degrade into organic matter within 6 to 9 months and be absorbed and utilized by the soil, realizing green and environmentally friendly planting. At the same time, the team has widely adopted biotechnology in the garlic planting process, effectively promoting the healthy growth of garlic through biological bacterial agents assisted seed dressing and bio-organic fertilizer application, improving the quality of garlic seeds from the source.

It is not accidental that Hebei University of Engineering chose to cooperate with Jiete Jintian Company to set up the doctoral innovation station. Previously, the two sides had jointly built the Daming Garlic Science and Technology Courtyard, accumulating a solid foundation for cooperation in the research and development and promotion of garlic planting technology, and also building a good platform for the landing and operation of the doctoral innovation station. "Daming County is a veritable hometown of garlic varieties, the 'birthplace' of garlic nationwide, and has a high-quality resource bank of new garlic varieties," Wang Xing sighed. The foundation of the garlic industry lies in garlic seeds. The team has established a germplasm resource bank containing 18 new garlic varieties in Daming, realizing the integrated research and development of variety screening and cultivation technology, taking into account scientific research innovation and industrial benefits, and making technology truly take root and empower production.

Today, the Daming Garlic Science and Technology Courtyard has achieved phased R&D results. After four years of intensive research, Wang Xing's team selected 18 fine varieties from 21 garlic varieties, and then selected 3 superior varieties based on multiple core indicators such as appearance quality, cultivation traits, disease resistance, yield and taste, successfully breaking through the key bottleneck in the breeding of new garlic varieties and effectively solving the problem of variety degradation.

Talking about these three new varieties, Xi Gangqiang knows them like the back of his hand: "'Yinzhong No.3' is a high-yield purple-skinned garlic with strong disease resistance, good yield performance, low planting cost and small risks, which is very popular among garlic farmers; 'Yinzhong No.5' is a high-yield early shoot garlic with green garlic shoot caps and dark green stems, resistant to gray mold and good storage performance. It goes on the market 20 days earlier than local red-cap garlic shoots with a higher price, and at the same time, the yield of garlic bulbs is also considerable, realizing dual-purpose of shoot and garlic and double efficiency increase; 'Yinzhong No.18' is a taste-type spicy garlic with moderate spiciness, outstanding taste, delicate and high-viscosity garlic paste, strong disease resistance and uniform garlic cloves, which is a high-quality and high-yield white garlic variety." The successful cultivation of these three new varieties not only solves the long-standing problem of variety degradation plaguing the industry, but also optimizes the arrangement of garlic planting stubble, providing a new path for garlic farmers to increase their income.

On the afternoon of October 24th, Wang Xing led reporters into the horticultural plant tissue culture room of Hebei University of Engineering, where several doctoral students were fully absorbed in tissue culture experiments, and the laboratory was busy. "The core of tissue culture experiments is to screen garlic varieties with excellent traits and induce the cultivation of virus-free seedlings," Wang Xing introduced. Garlic is an asexually propagated crop, and long-term planting will lead to toxin accumulation, while the stem tip is free of toxins. Therefore, the team takes samples from the stem tip and cultivates virus-free seedlings through tissue culture technology. These virus-free seedlings grow stronger, have higher yields, and can effectively improve garlic quality.

The application of tissue culture technology has brought revolutionary changes to garlic planting in Daming. Under the traditional planting mode, one mu of land requires 350 jin of garlic seeds, and one garlic clove can only grow into one seedling; while through tissue culture technology, one garlic clove can induce dozens or even hundreds of buds, which can then be cultivated into hundreds of seedlings. More importantly, virus-free tissue culture seedlings can significantly reduce planting costs and improve planting benefits, allowing garlic farmers to truly benefit from technological empowerment, and also injecting a steady stream of motivation into the sustainable development of Daming's garlic industry.