A "smart plant factory" was exhibited at the 9th Ningxia Seed Expo held in July. (PHOTO: XINHUA)

By Staff Reporters

Located in the upstream and downstream of the Yellow River basin respectively, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Shandong Province share close ties through sci-tech cooperation.

Shandong, a more developed province in east China, boasts rich innovation results and professionals, while northwest China's Ningxia has a strong desire to further develop and innovate.

This August, the science and technology departments of Shandong and Ningxia signed a new round of sci-tech cooperation framework agreements, aiming to further promote collaborative sci-tech innovation along the Yellow River basin.

As early as in 2017, Ningxia began to deepen sci-tech cooperation with eastern provinces, and Shandong became one of its important partners.

Since then, the two sides have jointly implemented a total of 56 sci-tech cooperation projects, built 10 sci-tech innovation platforms in textiles, fine chemicals, and bio-medical industries, achieving a number of key sci-tech results.

Since 2019, the Department of Science & Technology of Shandong has launched the intellectual aid program for sci-tech cooperation with Ningxia. As of August this year, 23 experts in new maize variety breeding, water-saving irrigation, green foods, and other fields, have been invited to share their expertise with technicians and farmers in Ningxia. A total of 1,160 people have benefited from 13 online and offline training sessions.

Sci-tech commissioners also play an important role in advancing cooperation. By the end of 2021, 11 sci-tech commissioners (teams) from Shandong were sent to Ningxia to help develop local agriculture.

By introducing the "honeysuckle cultivar cultivation, screening and evaluation method" by Professor Zhang Yongqing's team from Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Ningxia's Zhongwei Yangguang Muchang Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Company cultivated three excellent new varieties of honeysuckle, which were widely planted in Shandong, Hebei and Ningxia. Honeysuckle is used to clear heat and remove toxins in TCM.

Mutual benefit is the ultimate goal of cooperation between the two sides.

"In collaboration with Ningxia Dehao Technology Industry Co., Ltd., we are able to constantly discover new problems and improve our technology," said Su Jixin, a professor at the School of Environmental Science and Engineering at Shandong University. He believes that Ningxia has great advantages in energy, resources and many other aspects, and there will be more opportunities for cooperation between companies, universities and platforms of the two sides.

With the signing of the new agreements, Ningxia and Shandong are expected to carry out an all-round, multi-level cooperation on building innovation platforms and nurturing experts, and mutually enhance the innovation capacity and industrial levels.