Dongping village in Tongzhou district, Nantong, Jiangsu province has been focusing on developing the asparagus plantation industry in recent years. It has established a complete industrial chain including research, breeding, seedling cultivation, planting, and sales of asparagus.

The village currently has two standardized Dutch intelligent glass greenhouses with an area of 6,000 square meters, while a 750-square-meter biotechnology center laboratory and a 2,500-square-meter parent hybrid intelligent linked greenhouse are about to be completed.

The annual output value of planting asparagus in the village has exceeded 57 million yuan ($7.82 million), with an average yield of over 13,000 yuan per mu (0.07 hectares).

Jiang Chaohui is the first farmer in the village to cultivate asparagus on a large scale. He has been planting asparagus for 12 years. Since 2016, he has been using experimental trials to select high-quality and high-yield asparagus varieties.

"Our selected varieties can yield over 4,000 kilograms per mu and contribute to a net profit of about 12,000 yuan per mu," Jiang said.

The asparagus base in Jiang's farm has experimented with nearly 100 asparagus varieties from both domestic and international sources. Jiang has also established an asparagus germplasm resource garden and asparagus hybrid breeding laboratory, the only one of its kind in the province.

In July, Jiang signed a cooperation agreement with the Jiangsu Yanjiang Institute of Agricultural Sciences to jointly research the innovative technology of sugar-free micropropagation.

The rise of distinctive agricultural industries has driven local economic development. In 2022, the village revenue exceeded 1.9 million yuan, and it is expected to reach 2.1 million yuan this year.

Jiang Chaohui checks an asparagus in the greenhouse. [Photo/Nantong Daily]