Cooperative Research on Regulative Mechanism and Technology of Inland Saline-alkaline Soil Remediation and Utilization
by Zhiping Yang
A large acreage of inland salinized land that accounts for 65% of the total area of its type in China is valuable reserved land resources. Before the commencement of the project, a series of questions regarding inland salinized soil remediation and utilization remained unanswered. For instance, what are the remediation process and mechanisms of chemical conditioners? What is the saline-tolerant mechanisms underlying the salinity tolerance of cultivated plants and saline-tolerant plants? What are the regulative effects and mechanisms of film mulching and ridging on water, nutrients and salts? And how to precisely apply conditioners in the presence of large spatial variance in soil salt distribution? Against this background, the domestic and overseas scientific collaboration had been conducted for 6 years in this project to elucidate the remediation mechanism of sulfur- and carbon-containing conditioners in saline-alkaline soil, the salinity tolerance mechanisms underlying bio-meliorative effect of maize and switchgrass, and the trends of the water and salt migration and the mechanisms underlying the high-yield and high-efficiency production of maize when using different tillage and mulching methods, and ultimately developed region-scale rapid precise remediation technology based on soil salt spatial variance. During the implementation of the project, 4 new sulfur- and carbon-containing conditioners for inland saline-alkaline soil remediation were developed, and 7 salt-tolerant crop varieties were selected. The technology has been applied and extended for 19.5 thousand hm2, which has brought an economic benefit of RMB 93.344 million yuan and remarkable ecological benefit.
Upon the completion of the project, 3 experimental and demonstration bases for saline-alkaline soil reclamation had been established, 4 utility model patents had been licensed. Moreover, 28 peer-reviewed papers had been published, among which 5 were published in journals included in Science Citation Index (SCI), 2 were published in journals included in Engineering Index (EI), and 8 papers were co-authored by the Chinese and overseas participants. The project was inspected and ranked as “outstanding” for all the appraise indexes by the expert panel organized by China Minister of Science and Technology.
Through the implementation of the project, the cooperation and communication between China and USA and between China and Latvia, the country along the Belt and Road, has been enhanced. Meanwhile, a stable, long-term win-win international collaboration system has been established. Two sound international cooperation bases have been founded. All these activities have helped promote the internationalization of Shanxi’s scientific and technological endeavors to reclaim saline-alkaline soil, and have help raise the profile of our research team internationally.
