Text/Observer
"Holding the rice bowl", keeping an eye on grain and vegetables, from top to bottom, has suddenly become a hot topic in the past two years.
The Netherlands lacks light, but the rice bowl is very firm, because greenhouse technology leads the world;
Israel's water is as expensive as oil, and the lack of water is bound to lack food, which should have been fatal, but it changed its life against the sky with drip irrigation technology and became a delicate and dazzling "desert flower"...
These countries that are not "blessed" have become agricultural powers, without him: innate endowments are insufficient, and science and technology are created to make up for it.
What does this teach us?
01
"Technical generation difference" is a big long leg
As a traditional agricultural power, China once faced the loess for generations, and the development of agriculture relied on the "man-sea tactics".
Today, it is not necessary, because our agriculture is in a dividend period with a generational difference in technology and the secondary and tertiary industries that can be fed back!
Policy- as early as 2019, the state began the specific planning of digital agriculture, focusing on the three characteristics of "networking", "informatization" and "digitalization" to carry out agricultural reform - obviously, China's development of digital agriculture has a key advantage, that is, we have a large number of technical accumulation and successful experience in the industrial and service industries, forming a "technical generation gap" that can be used for agriculture.
(The concept of digital agriculture, formally proposed by academicians of the United States and the United States in 1997, refers to intensive and informatized agricultural technologies supported by geological space and information technology.) Today, the key advantage of China's development of digital agriculture is the "technical generation difference". ）
Therefore, we can see that in July 2020 and August 2021, Pinduoduo has held the "Duoduo Agricultural Research And Technology Competition" twice. It is no accident that the country's largest agricultural products uplink platform has gone one step further and become a pioneer in helping agricultural technology sink.
On April 25th, after more than 8 months of competition, the final summit of the second "Duoduo Agricultural Research and Technology Competition" was held online, and the tomatoes planted by the winning "Tomato Fast Growth" team far exceeded the traditional planting methods.
The second Duoduo Agricultural Research Technology Competition competed in the intelligent greenhouse tomato, and the standard was improved compared with the previous one - not only to fight for input and yield, but also for flavor and nutrition. In the words of Pinduoduo, it is "to eat both full and eat well"
Reflected in the process and outcome of the "Tomato Wars", the effect of the technology competition is obvious.
(The final of the 2nd Duoduo Agricultural Research Technology Competition, the wisdom greenhouse planted tomatoes, and the "tomato fast growth" team finally won the championship)
In this year's science and technology competition, the champion team "Tomato Fast Growth" developed a "disease management system", which can predict four tomato fungal diseases. From the final result, the design of the entire smart greenhouse makes the tomato yield close to the peak yield level of dutch greenhouse technology in the same period. The technology of other teams also surpasses the level of traditional cultivation in the flavor and nutrition of tomatoes...
In fact, in the past two sessions of the Duoduo Agricultural Research Competition, they are exploring the integration of AI technology into greenhouse planting, and some of its scientific research results have even gone out of the field and been recognized by farmers.
Chinese farmers are industrious and experienced. Advanced technology can be recognized by farmers, indicating that it has truly become a big leg.
02
Looking down on "flowers in the greenhouse"? It's a compliment to technology!
AI algorithm triumph and agricultural technology system improvement dance together, digital agriculture and "carbon neutrality" fly together... The second Duoduo Agricultural Research Competition impressed experts and scholars in the industry.
Yes, with the blessing of technology, the small matter of growing tomatoes in greenhouses can also be done very well.
First of all, on a global scale, greenhouse planting technology is a "widespread" technology - used to grow a variety of fruits, vegetables, flowers, can transcend the seasonal restrictions and the influence of the weather, significantly increase the yield. "Flowers in the greenhouse" is actually a compliment to farmers.
Overall, greenhouse cultivation is developing in the direction of standardization, automation and scale, and has ushered in new opportunities in intelligence - big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence technology that integrates software and hardware, and the application prospects in this field are very good.
Greenhouse cultivation pays attention to the controllability of various growth conditions, which can be said to be the best application scenario for digital agriculture.
(Duoduo Agricultural Research Smart Greenhouse Base in Kunming, Yunnan)
In the second Duoduo Agricultural Research Competition, several teams competed in the greenhouse to grow tomatoes, and a better "algorithm" became the key to the winner's team' victory:
"Over the course of six months of planting, the tomato growing team has been in a leading position in terms of weekly yields. As ai algorithms collect more and more data, through the continuous update and iteration of calibration, the increase in tomato yield is very obvious in the late planting stage. (Official information of the 2nd Duoduo Agricultural Research Competition)
Hardware determines the base and cost, and the algorithm determines the gap. Just like autonomous driving, smart hardware is used to collect data, but the software or algorithms that decide how to use this data and make decisions are the key, which is also fundamental to digital agriculture.
A set of mature algorithms can be promoted and applied more, faster, better and more economically, which is also the most promising place for digital agriculture.
It is also true that most of the scientific research results produced by the second Duoduo Agricultural Research Competition are related to algorithms. The Zhijia team of China Agricultural University has developed a complete set of "Smart Tomato Digital Control Cloud Platform", which includes a historical data analysis system, and the team has also developed a "tomato growth state recognition model construction", which can use algorithms to determine the size and maturity of fruits – not only fast, but also may be more reliable than manual workers with uneven skill levels.
(Zhijia Team's "Smart Tomato Digital Control Cloud Platform", covering irrigation, fertilization, environmental control, data analysis and other functions)
From the perspective of duoduo agricultural research competition, smart greenhouses pay attention to data analysis and precise control, which is not only the essence of digital agriculture, but also greatly helpful to "carbon neutrality".
The intelligent greenhouse in the agricultural research competition, because of its precision and intelligence, can reduce the wasteful consumption of resources in all aspects, especially in pesticides and fertilizers, which is of great significance to low-carbon and environmental protection - the "disease management system" developed by the tomato fast-growing team, through the technical monitoring of climate and crop growth conditions, can predict the risk of common fungal disease infections within 10 days, which can help growers to intervene in advance and use drugs accurately.
There are fewer drugs, and nature is more environmentally friendly and low-carbon.
Today, even in some agricultural powerhouses, agriculture is still a highly expensive and polluting industry. Taking the United States as an example, the 300 million tons of grain produced by the United States every year must consume 60 million to 70 million tons of oil, about 8 million tons of steel, about 40 million tons of chemical fertilizers (purified), and more than 1 million tons of generalized pesticides (raw drugs).
Therefore, the potential for carbon reduction in agriculture is very large.
Therefore, in terms of greenhouse cultivation, the Duoduo Agricultural Research Competition does not stick to digital technology, but involves the improvement of the entire agricultural technology system, which also plays an unexpected role in "carbon neutrality" - a set of "new lightweight greenhouse carbon dioxide enrichment technology" developed by the Xi persimmon team of Zhejiang University has done this. (The greenhouse is better sealed, and carbon dioxide is the most important gas in plant photosynthesis, so ensuring the concentration of carbon dioxide through enrichment technology is very important for the growth of greenhouse crops.) ）
Due to the strong adsorption and trapping ability of zeolite to some nutrients or carbon dioxide, the use of zeolite as a nutrient matrix is the trend of greenhouse cultivation. Based on this, the laboratory of the Xi Persimmon team screened out a variety of zeolite molecular sieves suitable for application in the agricultural cultivation environment, and developed a set of technical system of "efficient capture, light transfer, controllable application" - the team improved the selective absorption and desorption performance of zeolite on carbon dioxide by changing the pore size structure and raw material ratio, and adjusted the synthesis method and processing technology, so that the production and preparation can achieve zero pollution, low cost, and high yield; at the same time, based on the zeolite molecular sieve, the team also developed a lightweight simplified carbon dioxide enrichment device. Suitable for glass greenhouses, plastic greenhouses, the material itself can be recycled and reused.
Although the Team of Xi Persimmon who developed this technology did not win the championship, the improvement of this technology is considered to be a new direction with great potential for greenhouse cultivation in the era of "carbon neutrality and carbon peaking".
Duoduo Agricultural Research Competition is very pragmatic, from the first strawberry planting, to the second tomato planting, are "small point of view", but the technology does not set boundaries - greenhouse strawberry planting, planting tomatoes This small thing has let us see the broad technical breadth of digital agriculture.
Bidding farewell to Chinese agriculture after the "man-sea tactics", technology is the only direction, especially digital agriculture. Just like from simple assisted driving, to true autonomous driving, the road in between is long, but the potential is also great – agriculture is a long-term and arduous undertaking, but from the perspective of technology, the track of digital agriculture is wide enough, from full to really eat well, which may be the most critical step.
Facing the loess, it used to be to watch the sky to eat, and the future is not to press the body!