China shares its remarkable achievements in “smart agronomy” development and application with the CICA partners

China, in its capacity as Coordinator of Confidence Building Measures in the field of “Agriculture”, presented its most recent scientific developments in “smart agronomy” during the second seminar for CICA, held on 18-19 August 2021.  

The two-day seminar brought together 510 participants from 10 CICA Member States. Scientists from the Huazhong Agricultural University presented the breakthrough achievements in the field of agriculture at four thematic sessions of the seminar.

The session “Big biological data and smart breeding” was devoted to issues related to collection, storage and analysis of big biological data at the level of cells, organs, tissues of individual species and populations of species. It was emphasized that the systematic study of genetic and molecular mechanisms, underlying the variation of agronomic traits, highly efficient genomic breeding and synthetic design of new crops and varieties for future breeding efforts have become imperative in ensuring food security regionally and globally.  The scientists of the Huazhong Agricultural University professor Lin Li and professor Tingting Guo gave special emphasis to the discovery of characteristics and patterns, advanced modeling and biotechnology innovations in breeding and genetics of plants and animal breeding.    

The seminar participants were presented the scenarios on the implementation of smart breeding principles, smart equipment, digital systems, Internet of things, cloud computing, UAVs and other technologies facilitating the significant improvement of crop productivity and efficiency of animal breeding. Above all, it was proved that the implementation of smart technologies significantly reduces the spending volume of farmers.   

The second day of the seminar was focused on the matters related to satellite, remote and hyperspectral remote crop sensing and smart decision making models.  

In addition, the scientists and practicians from Turkey and Thailand shared their national achievements in the field of smart agronomy.

The seminar sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China was highly commended among the agricultural environment of CICA.