Mr Huang revealed these developments during an agricultural activity conducted recently at the Maruo Farms, saying the training included technicians and college students, and a number of grassroots agricultural machinery personnel who participated in the training course named “Green Super Hybrid Rice in China”.
He noted that 116 sets of agricultural machinery, 12 tons of rice, 9.2 tons of purified regular rice seeds and 6 tons of rice had been donated to The Gambia.
In a similar development, he advanced that the yield of hybrid rice in a core demonstration area was 9.35 tons per hectare
“Besides, two hybrid rice varieties were selected for local registration, and 14 vegetable varieties of 7 categories suitable for local production and cultivation were selected,” he explained.
Mr Huang added that the project had always adhered to the working concept of "joining hands with The Gambia and teaching them how to fish", and basically formed a working situation with the core demonstration area of Sapu Agricultural Experimental station in Central River Region as the "selected point".
He said there are rice planting areas in Central River Region, Upper River Region and North Bank as the "full picture", the technical guidance for households/farms as the "method", and influencing farmers as the "purpose".
In conjunction with the National Agriculture Research Institution (NARI) and the National Seeds Secretariat (NSS), he stated, the project aims to facilitate the implementation of regional hybrid rice experiments, high-yield cultivation technology demonstration and training.
“The project also aims to facilitate agricultural machinery operation demonstration, high-quality varieties promotion and irrigation infrastructure construction,” he said, adding: “Benefiting from the promotion of high-yield cultivation technology and the use of adaptive agricultural machinery, large-scale farmers under technical guidance obtained the maximum hybrid rice yield of 10.8 tons/ha, and the average yield of self-management farmers was about 7 tons/ha.”
He said loss results from harvest and milling processing were reduced by about 30% and 8% respectively.
