Principal Investigator: Cheng Tao
Funding Received: 60 Million RMB
Sponsored by: Ministry of Science and Technology of People’s Republic of China
Project Period: January, 2016 ─ December, 2020
Brief Introduction:
Agricultural production in China is facing severe challenges in such aspects as grain yield and quality, resource utilization, environment change and grain price competitiveness. It is urgent to develop modern grain crop production in the directions of precision planting, efficient crop management, informed policy making and quantitative implementation. However, the key technological innovation and the R&D level of agricultural machinery in China still lag behind those of the developed areas in the world such as the US and Europe. These gaps lead to serious threats to Chinese food safety and restrictions to the development and application of modern cultivation techniques for grain crops.
To meet the urgent demands for quantitative, accurate and efficient management techniques and intelligent equipment in modern crop production, this project focuses on the techniques for growth monitoring, diagnosis and precise cultivation of three major grain crops, rice, wheat and maize, in China. The aims are: (1) to establish platforms of dynamic monitoring and forecasting for crop growth based on the multi-source remotely sensed data from satellite, aerial and ground platforms; (2) to construct a system of precise crop cultivation by integration of real-time monitoring, intelligent diagnosis and quantitative regulation; (3) to develop a carrier of comprehensive technology application at multiple spatial scales and by integration of software and hardware products; and (4) to form a technology system for crop growth monitoring and diagnosis, and precise cultivation. All the developed techniques and systems will be assembled and applied to the three major grain production areas including the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the Huang-Huai-Hai plain and the Northeast plain of China for significant improvement in crop yield and quality, fertilizer and water use efficiency, and environmental impacts. This project is expected to promote the rapid development of precision agriculture and modern agriculture and to derive significantly social, economic and ecological benefits.
The main technological flow of this project included growth monitoring and diagnosis mechanism, key technology and product development, demonstration of technical application to the production of the three major grain crops. The whole job of the project is to be divided into four modules: monitoring and prediction of crop growth dynamics, quantitative diagnosis and regulation of crop growth, development of intelligent engineering products for crop cultivation, and demonstration of precise crop cultivation techniques. The results of this project will be evaluated by means of key common technologies, software and hardware products, technology demonstrations, scientific papers, national invention patents, technological standards and national computer software copyrights.
