By planting nectar-source plants on the edge of rice paddies and cultivating natural enemies of pests, the use of pesticides can be reduced by 80%, and rice can meet the standard of pollution-free agricultural products. The research result, "Multinational Joint Study Proves: Biodiversity Can Improve the Ability of Rice Ecosystems to Control Pests", a rice team of the Academician Expert Workstation of the Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Jinhua Plant Protection Station, was recently published in Natureplants, a sub-journal of nature," a top international journal of natural sciences, and its core content is to control insect pests through the restoration and construction of biodiversity.
The function of biodiversity in controlling crop diseases and pests has long been recognized by the scientific community. However, in the current agricultural production system, the biodiversity of many farmlands and their ecological service functions have been seriously weakened or even destroyed. Under the unified coordination of Academician Jinhua Plant Protection Station and Academician Heong KL of the International Rice Research Institute, multinational scientists have conducted multi-point regional experiments in Jinhua, China, central Thailand and southern Vietnam for four consecutive years. "Jinhua is an important rice-producing area in southern China, and it is also a transition zone between single-cropping rice and double-cropping rice, and it is of typical significance to choose to carry out experiments here." Chen Guihua, director and researcher of Jinhua Plant Protection Station who led the Jinhua regional trial, said that as early as 2006, Jinhua City established the world's first experimental demonstration base for the control of rice pests through applied ecological engineering aimed at reducing the use of chemical pesticides by restoring the function of farmland ecosystem services.
The Jinhua experimental team found in 22 kinds of test plant flowers that sesame flowers can effectively extend the lifespan of natural enemies of pests such as rice borer wasps, borer red-eyed bees, borer velvet cocoon bees, dimened borer cocoon bees and black-shouldered blind borers, and improve their control over the main pests of rice, such as rice planthoppers, dimorphic borers and rice longitudinal curling borers.
By analyzing the data from the test sites, the experts concluded that compared with farmers' self-controlled rice fields, ecological engineering measures can effectively control the population of rice planthoppers while ensuring that there is no significant difference in rice yield, reducing pesticide use by 70% and increasing economic benefits by 7.5%. The field factor analysis experiment in Jinhua showed that the number of chemical pesticides used at each test site was reduced by 3 times, the amount of use was reduced by 80%, and the quality of rice reached the standard of pollution-free agricultural products. Among them, the rice produced in the core test base has passed the green food certification.
The experimental team once calculated an account for the demonstration area of the grain production base in Tangxi Town, Wucheng District, counting the output of rice, sesame, soybeans, and zibai, and the economic income per mu of land reached more than 2700 yuan. At present, this technology has radiated to more than 60,000 mu of rice in Tangxi, Bailongqiao, Yangbu and Jiangtang towns, and has been demonstrated and promoted in many cities (counties) and some southern provinces in our province.
Chen Guihua said that after the ecological harm control technology has matured in the rice field, they have set their sights on vegetables, tea trees and other fields, and have established a 20-acre vegetable base and have carried out experiments in contiguous tea gardens.
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