Someone once made a joke that as long as there are Chinese, something must be grown.
Even after China's first probe landed on the moon, the first thing to study was whether the moon's soil was suitable for farming, which reflected the Chinese's obsession with "planting".
China, a big agricultural country, can be said to "do everything" in order to farm land.
When the news came out that "China has researched potatoes that can be grown in the desert, and even has produced more than 10,000 catties", it deepened the world's impression of the label of our agricultural power.
You heard it right, thanks to the unremitting efforts of our country, the desert has grown potatoes, and the yield is very impressive......
The desert with the least "dignity".
In 2023, there are concerns that many seafood products may be at risk of radiation in the future due to the contamination of the ocean by Japan's nuclear wastewater.
Some netizens pointed out an astonishing news that made the whole world look sideways: "In the inland Xinjiang region, China has developed a saline-alkali land simulation marine aquaculture technology, and the beautiful vision of enjoying fresh salmon in the inland can be realized in the future." ”
Now that the news is known to the public, everyone can't help but sigh at the advanced technology of China, which can actually use the hard-to-cultivate saline land for other purposes, to breed its own salmon, and in the future, it can always be self-sufficient without importing Japanese seafood.
In fact, this is not the first time that China has used deserts to develop agricultural products, as early as 2015, another desert in China with an even more severe situation also bloomed a new miracle.
When it comes to the desert, the first thing that comes to people's minds is the yellow sand and the sound of camel bells, and people will remember that Zhang Qian once went to the Western Regions, which opened up a splendid cultural, economic and trade route in this barren territory.
However, there is only one answer to the question of whether this desert can be cultivated on a large scale, and that is "impossible".
Deserts are terrains that are generally found in inland or highland areas, because the ocean winds do not reach the interior or are blocked by the higher foothills, so they are on the edge of the water cycle.
Perennial drought and lack of rain, plants are scarce, and over time, it has become the yellow sand that people see now.
Plants need a lot of water to grow, and if they can't get water on the shallow surface, they will automatically let their roots take root deeper, but the sand and gravel in desert areas are loose, and even if the roots are deep, they may be uprooted when the wind blows.
At this time, the old saying comes into play, that is, "there are always more ways than difficulties".
Thanks to the efforts of several generations of Chinese people, the Mu Us Desert in northern Shaanxi Province has been transformed from a deserted desert into a large potato production base.
As a result, the Mu Us Desert has become the most "undignified" desert in people's mouths.
Mu Us Desert
Located between Yulin in Shaanxi Province and Ordos in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the Mu Us Desert is one of the few deserts that exist in China.
You must know that most deserts have been formed for thousands of years, as the saying goes, the vicissitudes of the sea, and the special landform of the desert cannot be achieved overnight.
But the special thing about the Mu Us Desert is that hundreds of years ago, it was still a grassland with green grass and suitable for living.
So what is it that makes this grassland what it is today in an instant?
Dating back to the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Mu Us Desert at that time was still a lush grassland, with gurgling water and beautiful scenery, which was very suitable for settlement.
Such a beautiful environment won the favor of nomads, especially in the early Tang Dynasty, when the Mu Us Desert ushered in the grazing of many nomads.
However, the large number of cattle and sheep greatly reduced the vegetation cover of the area, and how could the people of the time understand what is called sustainable development, so the area quickly lost its original vitality under uncontrolled grazing.
Plants are the natural protective layer of the soil, but these gnawed potholes and even rootless plants quickly lose their function under the erosion of wind and sand.
The soil was eroded by the temperate terrestrial winds, which formed quicksand, which eventually became the Mu Us Desert today.
remodelling
It is often easier to destroy than to repair, and this is especially true for the natural environment.
It may have been a few generations of unbridled grazing from a grassland to a desert, but it would be difficult to restore a desert to a grassland.
For many years, the mainland has been committed to promoting the concept of tree planting in the desert and its surrounding areas, trying to gradually improve the desert environment by means of windbreak and sand fixation, and the Mu Us Desert is naturally also in the scope of consideration.
Moreover, compared with the desert in Xinjiang, the Maosu Desert is located in the east, and hundreds of years ago it was still a grassland, and there are many existing desert oases, so it is more suitable to be transformed first.
At first, people also wanted to use tree planting to control the Mu Us Desert, but with little effect.
After all, it is in a desert area, and even though the water content of the desert under the Mu Us Desert education is higher, most trees cannot survive because of its saline-alkali land.
At this time, a suggestion was made that it would be better to plant potatoes that were more cold and drought tolerant and could grow in saline soils.
This proposal is a precedent for desert management, which can both use vegetation to cover sand and create value from it.
But after all, the realization of the idea has to go through continuous experimentation, and everything is difficult at the beginning, and how to plant potatoes has become the first problem.
In the first year of the experiment, it can be said that the grains were not harvested, and even if the planted potatoes sprouted, they eventually failed to grow. Often, after a sandstorm, the army is lost.
Looking at the experimental field that was a mess on the harvest day, the experimenters learned from the pain and began to summarize the growth rules and precautions of desert potatoes, that is, to pay attention to soil transformation and irrigation projects.
Potatoes are hardy and drought-tolerant, but they need to be grown in loose soils and need regular irrigation, otherwise they will not be able to take root and grow.
Therefore, after several experiments, the experimenters selected the most suitable potato products for growing in the desert, established a rigorous irrigation process, and purposefully laid the irrigation pipe network, and finally completed the desert potato experiment.
Eventually, a potato production base sprung up in the Mu Us Desert, and even produced more than 10,000 catties of potatoes at one point! This is the miracle of this desert.
Perhaps for ordinary farmland, more than 10,000 catties of potatoes is not a particularly outstanding achievement. But you must know that this is a desert where "wind and sand transit, and no grass grows"!
Such achievements are definitely a great progress in agricultural science and technology in China and even in the world.
Although many people ridicule the Mu Us Desert as the most undignified desert, its ecological and economic value is extremely impressive.