Equipment irrigates crops. Photo: Screenshot of CCTV News

China has completed spring irrigation on more than 100 million mu (6.67 million hectares) of farmland nationwide, with local authorities stepping up efforts to secure water supplies for the season, CCTV News reported on Thursday citing official data.

At present, East China's Jiangxi Province’s largest irrigation project, the Ganfu Plain irrigation district, has begun releasing water, with a 1,690-kilometer canal network supplying 1.2 million mu of farmland. In Central China's Hubei Province, 146 medium and large irrigation districts are carrying out spring irrigation in an orderly manner, the report said.
As the critical spring irrigation period gets underway, the adoption of targeted technologies is helping farmland “quench its thirst” more efficiently.

In Laohekou, a small city in Hubei, a digital twin platform for water management integrates satellite remote sensing, weather forecasting and field sensor data to enable precise water allocation and improve irrigation efficiency, per CCTV News 

Now, spring irrigation has been fully rolled out across major winter wheat-producing regions, including the Huang-Huai-Hai region and Northwest China.

A new irrigation model is being promoted in Weinan, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, combining sprinkler systems to protect seedlings with canal irrigation to boost yields, in a bid to improve water-use efficiency.

Meanwhile, in Ningjin county, East China’s Shandong Province—located downstream of the Yellow River irrigation system—authorities are rolling out center-pivot integrated sprinkler systems, per CCTV News. By fine-tuning irrigation flow and water-fertilizer ratios across different zones, the approach has achieved water savings of up to 55 percent.

Beyond irrigation, the spring plowing season is also in full swing, with fieldwork progressing steadily across regions, increasingly underpinned by the application of advanced technologies.

In a village in Qingfeng county, Central China’s Henan Province, drones are assisting farmers with field management, while soil moisture sensors buried beneath wheat fields provide real-time data on parameters including moisture levels, temperature, pH and nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium content, according to a Xinhua News Agency report on Tuesday.

Paired with intelligent water-fertilizer control robots and an integrated drip irrigation system, the sensors form a fully automated management framework that links monitoring, analysis and precise input delivery.

Global Times