A project to demonstrate water efficiency technology for cold and dry areas has introduced semi-permanent, permanent, and machine array irrigation technologies to 1,050 mu(1 mu= 0.0667 hectare) of farmland. Meanwhile, the project selected three areas desirable for semi-permanent, permanent, and machine array irrigations as demonstration zones, which offer 3,5000 mu of farmland for experiments.
The project has diffused the technology to 200,000 mu of farmlands in Qinghai Province, which brought up noticeable economic, social and ecological benefits. The effort has not only reduced the irrigation water volume from 750m3/mu to current 250-500m3/mu, but also raised the irrigation channel utilization coefficient from 0.45 to 0.8, and the irrigation water utilization coefficient from 0.35 to 0.85. The irrigation water ration per mu per time also dropped from 80～100m3/mu to 50～60m3/mu. In the meantime, the average yield of spring wheat and rape in the demonstration zones saw a respective rise by 30% and 40%, with an increased grass yield by 50%. The demonstration zones have registered an output volume of RMB 3 million, with RMB 146,000 paid for taxes, and a profit of RMB 450,000. The demonstration project has diffused the semi-permanent irrigation and winch irrigation techniques to the vast shallow hilly areas and pasturelands in the province. Calculated on 3000m3 of water saved from per hectare, the effort has saved 6556×105m3 water from 218521.59 hectares of irrigated lands in the Huangshui Valley, the Yellow River Basin, and Chaidamu Basin. It has not only alleviated the water shortage caused by farming, tree growing, and animal raising activities, which in turn brought water shortage to industrial sectors and urban life, but has also restored irrigations to 1.68 million hectares of pasturelands. The project makes a meaningful contribution to protecting and restoring the fragile ecological environment, and steadily improving the seriously degraded pastureland ecosystem. |
