On the evening of Nov. 17, CCTV-17 broadcast Water Chestnuts Out of the Mud in its program I Love Invention, which pictured a unique man-machine competition between the water chestnut harvester developed by Professor Zhang Guozhong's team from the College of Engineering at HZAU and farmers in Fang Gaoping town, Tuanfeng county, Hubei province.
Water chestnut is a characteristic aquatic vegetable grown in South China with high nutritional, medicinal and economic value. However, it’s hidden in mud and mainly harvested by hand, resulting in hard labor, low efficiency and huge post-harvest losses, which has severely limited the development of water chestnut industry. Thus, farmers have a high demand for developing mechanized equipment to solve the problem.
Prof. Zhang, a scientist at the National Mechanization of Aquatic vegetable production in Modern Industrial Technology system, has been concerned about this technical difficulty for a long time. He said, “After hearing about the difficulties farmers face in harvesting water chestnuts, we want to develop a harvester for them to replace backbreaking farm work and reduce labor costs.”
The water chestnut harvester is working in the field. [Photo/CCTV]
Actively responding to the farmers’ call, Zhang organized his team to go deep into the front line of the field. After careful research, repeated arguments, and continuous efforts on technical scheme and skill, they finally developed the first shovel-type water chestnut harvester in China. Without disappointing the farmers’ expectations, the program group and Zhang’s team arrived Fang Gaoping town as promised with their water chestnut harvester. They had a man-machine competition with 14 local growers in a 27-square-meter field designated on the planting base. In the end, the machine team harvested nearly 38 kilograms more water chestnut than the manual team, which equals an extra 933 kilograms per mu (a Chinese unit of area = 0.0667 hectares) of land. If sold at local market price, each mu of water chestnuts can increase the income for farmers by more than 3,300 yuan.
Prof. Zhang’s team didn’t stop the pace of research and development. They said they would further optimize the design scheme and boost the performance of the equipment, hoping to free the hands of farmers by making harvesting mechanized, automated and smart, thus contributing to local industrial development, rural revitalization and farmers’ prosperity.
Background:
Tuanfeng Water Chestnut is a Nationally Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) product. As one of the major water chestnut production areas in Hubei province, Fang Gaoping town is the home of “Hubei Water Chestnut No.1”,and give the name to the product. In 2019, the “Tuanfeng Water Chestnut Mechanized Plantation and Production Demonstration Base” was established by HZAU in Fang Gaoping town to carry out the whole process of mechanized experiment and demonstration of cultivation, transplanting, plant protection, harvesting, cleaning and grading, covering an area of more than 6,000 mu after nearly three years of co-construction.
Source: http://news.hzau.edu.cn/2022/1121/65141.shtml
Translated by: Zhang Qiongfang
Supervised by: Wang Xiaoyan
