Researcher Tian Lili from Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences works at the tea garden. (PHOTO: WANG Yanbin/S&T Daily)

By WANG Yanbin & CHEN Chunyou

Entrepreneur Dong Guiping had reached rock bottom, watching in despair as her tea plantation business crashed. The slow decline had been taking place for over a decade and she was at her wits end about how to turn things around. Fortunately, Dong met up with Tian Lili, a researcher at the Tea Research Institute of Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

By adopting Tian's planting methods, the output of Dong's tea plantation rocketed, increasing her income more than 10-fold within 12 months. Tian has since become a shareholder in Dong's family farm business.

The establishment of this collaborative model is the result of a reform pushed by Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences (SAAS). In August 2020, a total of 73 researchers from SAAS were dispatched to serve temporary positions in remote areas, helping promote rural revitalization. About 85 percent of the selected researchers are aged under 45. Some of them may act as the head of a town, the director of a bureau, or a leader in a specific technology field. Tian is one of them.

While Tian helped Dong find the best tea variety to breed and cultivate in order to become a competitive brand, she also offered advice and consultancy for daily management of the tea-planting process. This helped address the challenges through the transfer and use of new and existing technologies.

Under the cooperative agreement, Tian also receives dividends as a farm shareholder and has used some of this income to help establish a development fund, in order to boost the R&D of new tea varieties.

Meanwhile Jing Fugui, an expert in cattle genetic research, took up the post as the temporary head of a town, where he was challenged to attract resources from the surrounding area to upgrade the local cattle industry chain. Finally, the town achieved an industrial breakthrough.

Achieving success, and gaining experience from the production line operation, also helped Jing find a research topic, which has been allocated funds from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

To encourage more researchers like Tian and Jing, SAAS has clarified the split ratio of the ownership of new technology, of which the research team takes up the biggest share, up to 70 percent, and the research team's affiliated institute and the academy account for 20 percent and 10 percent respectively.

The technology partner mechanism allows young researchers to play a leading role in their assigned projects, and test the validity of their research results. Until July 2023, SAAS has dispatched about 543 researchers into rural areas.

More and more young researchers, like those born in the 1980s, have grown to be leading experts in their respective fields. They are given a greater say in deciding the technology roadmap and selecting the potential research candidates, which further stimulates their research vitality.

The reform in SAAS helps rural farmers in Shandong province get access to technology and talent resources, achieving a win-win model for those struggling to make it on their own.