Industrial Cluster: Mechanized Equipment Needs To Be Further Expanded For Cotton Picking In The Yellow River Cotton Region

4MLQ-3 crawler light cotton harvester collects cotton in the field. 4MLQ-3 crawler light cotton harvester collects cotton in the field.

In every cotton picking season, in the vast Xinjiang cotton region of China, you can see that baled cotton pickers swallow rows of cotton into their mouths, and then spit out a large round cotton bag. This kind of cotton picker has high operating efficiency, labor and labor saving, and brings the joy of harvest to local cotton farmers. However, when the same "cotton picking artifact" came to the cotton area of the Yellow River basin to work, it seemed to become "acclimatized" and unable to exert its strength. Why?

"Most cotton pickers in Xinjiang use the horizontal spindle picking technology, which hooks the cotton with a rotating spindle and pulls it out of the cotton plant. This technology requires high cotton dryness. However, there is always rain or heavy fog in October every year in the cotton area of the Yellow River basin, and wet cotton cannot be completely stripped through the spindle picking, resulting in difficulties in harvesting." Qi Hong, a researcher, deputy director of the Cotton Research Institute of Hebei Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences (hereinafter referred to as "the Institute"), said. In addition, the body of Xinjiang cotton picker is heavy, so it is not flexible to turn and turn in muddy fields, and the wheels will sometimes get stuck in the mud.

Mechanized harvesting is the most critical link in the whole process of mechanization of cotton production. What is the way of mechanized cotton harvesting in the Yellow River Basin?

Joint research and development of new "cotton picking artifact"

For many years, the cotton institute has focused on the whole process mechanized management of cotton in coastal saline alkali land, and carried out the screening and demonstration of machine picked cotton varieties and technological innovation of whole process mechanized management. From 2021, the Cotton Institute will take Fengnan District, Tangshan City, Hebei Province as a demonstration base, and start the research and modification of new cotton pickers in conjunction with Hebei Agricultural Mechanization Promotion Station, Nanjing Agricultural Mechanization Research Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and local agricultural machinery enterprises.

"First of all, we will change the picking method from spindle picking to brush roller picking, and use a pair of reverse rotating flexible picking rollers with a horizontal inclination of 30 degrees to shoot down cotton from the cotton plant in the way of high-frequency flexible impact to complete the picking." Chen Changlin, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Agricultural Mechanization of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said that this way can not only pick wet cotton, It can also effectively reduce the pulling damage to cotton fiber during picking, and the cotton picking rate can reach 96%.

In addition, the walking mode of the cotton picker has also been improved, from the traditional wheel type to the crawler type, so that the trafficability of dry land and waterlogged land is better, and it is more convenient to turn around. At the same time, the design of the whole model is more compact, weighing only 5.2 tons, less than 1/3 of the weight of the general cotton picker.

On November 7, we saw this 4MLQ-3 crawler type light cotton harvester at the on-site observation meeting of mechanized cotton harvesting, processing and comprehensive utilization in coastal saline alkali land in Dongtianzhuang Town, Fengnan District. The cotton picker is used to harvest cotton in the 2000 mu saline alkali land machine cotton harvesting experimental field planted by the Xinghe Cotton Farmers' Planting Cooperative. With the roar of the machine, only stalks remained on the cotton plant where the cotton picker passed, and the picked cotton was instantly sucked into the cotton storage box behind the machine.

Good equipment needs to be matched with good varieties and technologies

In order to improve the efficiency of mechanized cotton harvesting, the key is to select high-quality mechanized cotton varieties. Researcher Guo Baosheng, director of the Genetics and Breeding Research Office of the Institute of Cotton, said that for good machine picked cotton varieties, the first fruit branch should be more than 20 cm from the ground to avoid waste due to the failure of cotton pickers to pick; The stems should be strong and firm, the bolls should be concentrated, the floc content should be moderate, and the angle between fruit branches should be small, which is convenient for close planting and mechanical mining; In addition, varieties should have both stress resistance and high yield.

At present, the breeding team of the Cotton Institute has screened and bred a batch of new drought resistant and salt tolerant machine picked cotton varieties, such as "Jimian 30" and "Jimian 262", and planted them in the demonstration base. The seed cotton yield of the two varieties reached 330.5 kg/mu and 335.5 kg/mu respectively, increasing by 19.6% and 21.4% compared with the control cotton field.

Guo Baosheng said that in order to ensure the smooth mechanized harvesting of cotton, technical guidance throughout the planting process cannot be absent. The integrated technology of cotton planting and sowing in saline alkali land is adopted in the sowing period to achieve full seedling strength; During the growth of cotton, water, fertilizer and medicine are regulated throughout the whole process to build a high-yield plant type that meets the requirements of mechanical harvesting; In the later stage, defoliation and ripening technology are used to ensure the final mechanized harvesting efficiency.

Zheng Hongtao is the head of Xinghe Cotton Farmers' Planting Cooperative. During the three years of cooperation with the Cotton Institute, he was deeply impressed by the benefits brought by the mechanization of cotton production. "A large area of machine harvested cotton can save labor and time, save costs and increase efficiency, and also improve the quality of cotton." Zheng Hongtao calculated that the original cost of picking 1 mu of land by hand was about 600 yuan. Now the new cotton picker can pick 6-10 mu of cotton per hour. He only needs to hire two agricultural machine operators, rent a farm vehicle, and pay some oil money to reduce the cost of picking 1 mu of land to less than 100 yuan.

Promote the transformation of cotton production to full mechanization

Under the guidance of the Cotton Institute, the Xinghe Cotton Farmers' Planting Cooperative introduced lint pretreatment and processing equipment matched with machine picked cotton from other places, which can quickly separate impurities such as bell shells, stalks, cotton leaves, gravel blocks, etc. mixed in machine picked cotton, not only with high cleaning efficiency, but also with little damage to cotton fibers.

The cooperative also undertakes the processing of cotton by-products such as cottonseed oil, cottonseed feed, cottonseed germ stick, and hopes to form a demonstration and driving effect in the region with the industrial chain development model of "scientific research+production+processing+by-product utilization".

Hebei Province is the traditional dominant cotton producing area in China. In recent years, due to the continuous decline of cotton prices, the shortage of rural labor, the low degree of mechanization of cotton production and other factors, the cotton planting efficiency has continued to decline, and the cotton area in the province has shrunk significantly. Fengnan District is a traditional cotton producing county in Tangshan City, and one of the few districts and counties in Hebei Province with a cotton planting area of more than 100000 mu. The annual planting area is stable at more than 120000 mu.

Member of the Party Leadership Group of Hebei Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences Wei Hongxia, vice president, said: "We concentrated our preponderant scientific research strength to make efforts in the cultivation of new varieties suitable for mechanization, innovation of supporting cultivation technology model, research and development of cotton picking machinery, utilization of cotton by-products, etc., and established a 10000 mu demonstration party of cotton production mechanization with local cooperatives in Fengnan District, to promote the transformation and upgrading of cotton production to full mechanization, which not only provides important technical support for revitalizing Hebei cotton industry, It also provides a model for the development of cotton industry in the Yellow River basin. "

In 2023, the mechanized cotton recovery rate in Xinjiang has exceeded 85%, while the mechanized cotton recovery technology in the Yellow River basin is still in the demonstration stage, and large-scale promotion still needs time. Zhang Jianhong, the chief expert of the cotton innovation team of Hebei modern agricultural industrial technology system and the director of the cotton institute, said that the team will continue to strengthen the selection of high-yield and widely applicable mechanized varieties in the next step, optimize the whole process mechanized production technology of cotton seed, management, harvesting and other links, improve the harvesting performance and packaging function of cotton pickers, and further improve the harvesting Transport and storage efficiency, explore intelligent management mode of cotton field, and make cotton production more intelligent and convenient; At the same time, promote the implementation and application of the whole process mechanization scheme of cotton production, and promote the upgrading of cotton production technology in Hebei Province.