Weiyuan County Teams Up With Space Program to Revolutionize Fig Varieties

The fig industry in Weiyuan county, Neijiang city, Sichuan has a humble beginning, dating back more than 130 years ago. Today, the county experiences prestige and prosperity thanks to the tasty fruit.

On Aug 15, the 2023 World Fig Conference and Expo, hosted by the International Society for Horticulture Science, was held in Weiyuan. The four-day event drew global attention to the county and its secrets in fig industry development.

Thanks to its unique natural environment and location, the growing period of figs in Weiyuan is 45 and 60 days shorter than the main production areas in Shandong province and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region respectively, Neijiang Daily reported.

In 2011, Weiyuan set figs as its leading industry in modern agriculture and made long-term plans for the industry's development. It adopted a new agricultural development model, which involves farmland-use rights transfer, limited-term operation, partial government subsidies, non-compensated transfer to specialized organizations or farmers and purchase orders.

Based on the new model, the county cultivated and supported new types of agricultural operation entities such as specialized cooperatives, family farms, and major growers, incentivizing about 15,000 rural households to plant figs.

Additionally, it built 1,000-hectare modern fig agri-parks with the most complete fig industry chains in China, including planting, processing, logistics, research and development, management services, and park-village integration.

Over the past decade, fig cultivation in Weiyuan has transitioned from scattered planting to large-scale cultivation. As of 2022, the fig planting area in Weiyuan is the largest in China. It has reached a size of 3,466 hectares, accounting for 15.7 percent of the nation's total.

The county also attaches importance to agricultural science and technology. It boasts the only fig professor workstation in China Agricultural University and the only county-level fig research institute. Researchers there provide technical support for the development of the fig industry in the whole province by establishing germplasm and gene banks, and breeding new varieties.

So far, the fig germplasm resource bank includes more than 90 varieties and the county has applied for 26 patents and bred six new varieties.

China's space program offers a new idea to cultivating new fig varieties. In October 2021, after traveling in space for 183 days in the Shenzhou XIII manned spacecraft, 400 grams of fig seeds returned to earth. Later, researchers from China Agricultural University bred 32,500 seedlings, which were planted in Weiyuan in March.

Xu Yongning, senior agronomist of the Weiyuan world fig expo park management committee, said it is the world's first space breeding of figs. The purpose is to obtain more variants that adapt to the climate in Weiyuan, and to select high-quality varieties of high yield, disease and insect resistance, storability and transportability excellence. This breeding project has revolutionized the development of China's fig varieties.

To further deepen the integration development of agriculture, culture and tourism, Weiyuan utilizes its fig industry advantages by transforming production areas into scenic areas, countrysides into parks and products into commodities. It has built a world fig expo garden that integrates fig cultivation, research, sightseeing, leisure, cultural popularization and picking experience.