The growing troubles of China's fruit industry: low level of mechanization in production

[ China Agricultural Machinery Industry News ] China is a big fruit country. The fruit planting area and output have been stable in the world in recent years. At the same time, it is also the world's largest fruit consumer, but it is hard to say that it is a strong country. “Big but not strong, not good” is the “growth trouble” that China's fruit industry is currently facing, and the low level of mechanization in fruit production is one of the main shortcomings.

At present, the agricultural machinery market has entered a subdivision era. Orchard machinery may be expected to become a new blue ocean of agricultural machinery. The agricultural machinery industry should increase the research and development of orchard machinery to help build a fruit industry.

The average comprehensive mechanization rate of the fruit industry is only 26.58%.

The 2015 National Agricultural Mechanization Statistical Annual Report shows that the average comprehensive mechanization rate of China's fruit industry is only 26.58%, of which the mechanical plant protection rate and mechanical transport rate are higher, reaching 45.29% and 54.23%, respectively. At 29.43%, the mechanical fertilization rate and mechanical pruning rate were as low as 18.56% and 11.32%, respectively, while the mechanical recovery was only 2.33%. He Xiongkui, professor of the Center for Pharmaceutical and Drug Application Technology of China Agricultural University, lamented: "The level of mechanization in China's fruit industry is only equivalent to the level of the developed countries in the 1950s and 1960s. The gap is very large, and it can not meet the development of modern fruit industry. Need, but also incompatible with China's fast-growing economy."

The reason why the comprehensive mechanization rate of the fruit industry is so low is that, for a long time, the focus of R&D, production and promotion of the whole agricultural machinery industry in China has been placed on the main food crops such as wheat, corn and rice, and the focus on the orchard machinery field. On the other hand, China's fruit trees are mainly planted in mountainous hilly areas. The geographical conditions and planting patterns vary widely from place to place, and the agronomy and agricultural machinery are out of line. The existing ordinary agricultural machinery and a small number of orchard machinery are also difficult to apply to large Most orchards.

Hong Tiansheng, a professor at South China Agricultural University, said: “Foreign orchards in foreign countries are mostly flat, large-scale planting, fruit trees are short, line spacing is wide, management is standardized, and all kinds of large-scale machinery such as drugs, trimming, harvesting, etc. can be operated, and agricultural machinery and agronomy are combined. Very good, it is easy to achieve mechanized production.” In contrast, the traditional orchard in China, as Yang Xin, a professor at the Modern Agricultural Equipment R&D Center of Hebei Agricultural University, concluded, “the scale is small, the slopes are large, the rows are heavily concealed, and people are difficult to travel. The machine is more difficult to enter the garden; the trunk is erect, the fruit tree is high, and the tree canopy, low bifurcation, pruning, flower thinning and fruit thinning are difficult to manage, pesticides can not hit the tree top, plane results, mechanical harvesting is difficult; many orchards are built When there is no reserved land, the power machinery can't enter the ground and turn, or there is no supporting machine farm.” In recent years, Shaanxi, Shandong, Xinjiang, Hebei and other provinces actively promote the planting mode of dwarfing and wide-row planting. A number of modernized and standardized standardized orchards have been built, but the traditional old orchards still account for the majority of the country.

“Different fruit varieties, different planting patterns, and soil conditions in different regions have different requirements for mechanized production. For example, there are 7 major producing areas in China, and the varieties in each producing area are different. The planting pattern is also divided into V. Type cultivation, scaffolding cultivation, single-hedge cultivation, etc. The same variety is in the high latitudes of Xinjiang. In winter, the vines need to be dismantled and dug and buried, and then re-excavated and tied up in the spring, where high temperatures are not needed. Xu Liming, a professor at the College of Engineering, China Agricultural University, believes that “how does the orchard machinery adapt to the requirements of agronomy? The integration of agricultural machinery and agronomy is a big challenge.”