China News Service, Urumqi, April 8 (Liu Wanle, Weng Jiangchuan) Currently, 130,000 mu (1 mu = 666.67 square meters) of fragrant pear flowers are blooming in Tiemenguan City, the Second Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, located south of the Tianshan Mountains. As a well-known Korla fragrant pear production base, the local area seized the best pollination period of less than two weeks and began to pollinate fragrant pear trees. According to reports, this year, drone pollination has become a trend.

Drones were performing high-efficiency liquid pollination operations in a fragrant pear orchard in the 14th Company of the 29th Tuanyuan Garden in Tiemenguan City, the second division on April 7. This technology liberates farmers from the heavy pollination work and improved production efficiency. "In the past, when we pollinated manually, there were about 15 to 16 workers per day. Now we use drones to pollinate, and the cost is reduced." said Wang Huifang, an employee of the 29th Regiment.

Luo Shudong, a doctoral supervisor of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences who is currently investigating in Tiemenguan City, introduced that the superiority of drone pollination lies in high efficiency and more uniform fruit setting. "From the perspective of the experimental results, the yield per mu can be increased by more than 500 kilograms, and the labor cost can be reduced by about two-thirds compared to manual pollination according to estimates of the first two years"

"Using drones for liquid-assisted pollination can greatly ease the labor demand during flowering." Song Wen, senior agronomist at the Second Division Agricultural Technology Extension Station, said that drones can pollinate one mu of fragrant pear trees in one minute, while the same area for artificial pollination, it takes 3 people a day to finish.

Song Wen introduced that in 2021, the drone operation area of the Second Division in Tiemenguan City is more than 8,000 mu, and it is expected to reach 20,000 mu in 2022.

Recently, with the blessing of technologies like the Internet of Things and remote sensing crop monitoring, drones have made the agricultural production of Xinjiang Corps to be “smart” agriculture. Drones can provide services including plant protection, fertilization, sowing, and pollination etc. They are more and more popular and have become a strong support for smart agriculture.