Science and technology provide key support and impetus to China's western development strategy. Since its founding in 1959, the Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Reclamation Sciences (XAARS) has conducted R&D for the production and harvest of food crops, cotton, edible oil crops, sugar beets, animal husbandry, forestry and fruits.

The XAARS is located in the northern suburbs of Shihezi City, 150 kilometers from Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang. With 45 years of development, it has become a comprehensive scientific research organization comprising eight research institutes covering food crops, cotton, agricultural machinery, animal husbandry and veterinary science, forestry, irrigation and soil and local specialty processing. There is also a Food Quality Supervising and Testing Center and a new Agricultural Technology Promotion and Service Center. Covering a total area of 320 hectares, with 180 hectares for experiments, it now employs 267 researchers.

The academy works with the local government to help impoverished villagers. At present, poverty relief projects are under way on 10 farms. Together with the Xinjiang Construction and Production Corp, it has helped five agricultural and livestock farms escape poverty so far.

Since its founding, the XAARS has developed 22 new varieties, including vegetables, edible-oil sunflowers, rice and corn. Its animal husbandry section has developed the Chinese merino fine-wool sheep and meat-type fine-wool sheep. Eighteen new agricultural tools have come out of its machinery institute.

Professor Shi Guoqing, director of the XAARS Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Institute, says that one of the academy's most outstanding achievements is the Chinese merino fine-wool sheep. Originally bred by academician Liu Shouren, honorary president of the XAARS, the variety has reached world-class standards, breaking the Australian monopoly on high-quality wool sheep.

The XAARS has built a sheep-breeding base at Ziniquan, 50 kilometers from Shihezi. The high-quality A, B and C series of fine-wool sheep are now raised on 80 percent of the Xinjiang's pasturelands, the choice of local herders seeking to improve profitability.

Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and the northeastern provinces are China's wool producing areas, but climate and topography have restricted development. The mild winters of southern China can supply sheep with fresh grass throughout the year. Led by Liu Shouren, the XAARS has been working on breeding northern sheep in the southern areas. Experiments have so far been carried out in Hubei, Sichuan, Yunnan, Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces, significantly expanding the development of stockbreeding.

Since 2001, the XAARS has been working on breeding the Chinese merino super-fine-wool sheep and industrializing the fine-wool sheep base. This is one of the key western development scientific projects launched by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

"The wool processing industry of China has been burgeoning since China's entry into the World Trade Organization, and the demand for high-quality wool will undoubtedly skyrocket. Although currently we can compete with Australia in terms of quality of the fine-wool sheep, we still lag far behind in quantity. In next five years, the focus of our research will be on developing two key labs: the animal gene project lab and embryo transplant lab. They will improve the quantity and competitiveness of Chinese merino fine-wool sheep in the international market," said Shi Guoqing.

With major contributions by the Chinese merino fine-wool sheep and advanced agricultural machines, the XAARS had reaped a profit of 6 billion yuan (US$725 million)  by the end of 2003. It is making a great contribution to western development and the economic growth of the border areas by adjusting the local agricultural structure.

(China.org.cn by staff reporter Wang Qian October 5, 2004)