News on China's scientific and technological development.

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taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
localizer said:

That' a good 250km x 250km of land

We just gotta get our older agrarian generation through retirement and we can move to higher GDP/capita


I truly believe if China can one day transform the deserts into habitable land.
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The rice variant is resistant to high PH level water, but it still need lots of water to grow, I don't think this variant of rice has anything to do with dry land. Wheat is a much better choice.

Problem with desert is that there is almost no nutrient in sand, so any plant that lives there can barely survive itself, no extra production of protein and carbohydrates can be made for human consumption. Of course with plantation (wild grass) desert can be useful, at least no moving sand.
 
T

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
zgx09t said:
That'd be China's home grown GMO rice if I have to take a guess.
12 tons per hectare yield is quite impressive. With a million hectares available to develop, that's something.
Imagine what 3 crops rotation can bring with different safe home grown GMO seeds.
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This is not GMO. The rice is called "sea rice 海水稻" which is natural (wild) variant of rice. The cultivated rice variant is like cousin. Sea rice is naturally distributed in swamps near sea. What China did is interbreeding (杂交), it is mating wild rice with cultivated rice like Mongol horse with Arabian horse, not artificial genetic manipulation in GMO.

This is another importance of maintaining bio-diversity, and one reason we should not let GMO to dominant. GMO will artificially create a "superior" variant which will displace all the "inferior" variant, in the end we will have only one variant left. The "superior" is only so in a specific environment but becomes inferior when things change, same like dinosaurs. This is what the movie "interstellar" has demonstrated when all crops on earth are killed by the same disease, leaving human with no wild variant to replace.

I am not totally against GMO, but I think we should be extremely careful with this kind of advancement.
 
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ZeEa5KPul

ZeEa5KPul

Colonel
Registered Member
taxiya said:
Problem with desert is that there is almost no nutrient in sand, so any plant that lives there can barely survive itself, no extra production of protein and carbohydrates can be made for human consumption.
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Nutrients can be added with fertilizer. The problem with desert (other than dryness) is that sand doesn't have the structure to retain water, nutrients, and a microbiome. This can be fixed in a wide variety of ways, my favourite of which is a carboxymethylcellulose additive:
 
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OppositeDay

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It's worth noting that fast-neutron reactor is often cited as one of the few technological fields where India is substantially ahead of China. But with the Indian Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor suffering yet another delay it's now quite possible for the first CFR-600 unit to be commissioned before the first PFBR.

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Apparently the Indian project has been delayed so many times that many of its core designers and engineers are now retired.

(Of course China received substantial Russian assistance for CFR-600, but it's not like Indians haven't got French help. )
 
LawLeadsToPeace

LawLeadsToPeace

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Moderator - World Affairs
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OppositeDay said:
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It's worth noting that fast-neutron reactor is often cited as one of the few technological fields where India is substantially ahead of China. But with the Indian Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor suffering yet another delay it's now quite possible for the first CFR-600 unit to be commissioned before the first PFBR.

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Apparently the Indian project has been delayed so many times that many of its core designers and engineers are now retired.

(Of course China received substantial Russian assistance for CFR-600, but it's not like Indians haven't got French help. )
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Wait, based on some quick research, the Russians seemed to only have supplied the nuclear fuel for the CFR 600 but did not provide technical assistance to the project. Is there a source that indicates that the Russians helped design the CFR 600?
 
T

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
OppositeDay said:
Last month's news:

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It's worth noting that fast-neutron reactor is often cited as one of the few technological fields where India is substantially ahead of China. But with the Indian Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor suffering yet another delay it's now quite possible for the first CFR-600 unit to be commissioned before the first PFBR.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Apparently the Indian project has been delayed so many times that many of its core designers and engineers are now retired.

(Of course China received substantial Russian assistance for CFR-600, but it's not like Indians haven't got French help. )
Click to expand...
We have seen what happened in the carrier building. :cool: An earlier startup means nothing without a strong industrial base.
 
Z

zgx09t

Junior Member
Registered Member
taxiya said:
This is not GMO. The rice is called "sea rice 海水稻" which is natural (wild) variant of rice. The cultivated rice variant is like cousin. Sea rice is naturally distributed in swamps near sea. What China did is interbreeding (杂交), it is mating wild rice with cultivated rice like Mongol horse with Arabian horse, not artificial genetic manipulation in GMO.

This is another importance of maintaining bio-diversity, and one reason we should not let GMO to dominant. GMO will artificially create a "superior" variant which will displace all the "inferior" variant, in the end we will have only one variant left. The "superior" is only so in a specific environment but becomes inferior when things change, same like dinosaurs. This is what the movie "interstellar" has demonstrated when all crops on earth are killed by the same disease, leaving human with no wild variant to replace.

I am not totally against GMO, but I think we should be extremely careful with this kind of advancement.
Click to expand...

If it was done through traditional selective breeding to get a new cultivar then it's all the better.
Chinese have been doing stuff like that with plants for ages. Raphis excelsa came to mind.
Upcoming national seed bank would help tremendously in that regard.

Water requirement would be a factor to consider, depending on the availability and region. As a quick rule of thumb for traditional farmers, 10 ton of water is needed to get a ton of yield. Maybe soilless aeroponic vertical farming is the way to go. Wet crops can be grown in dry areas, or anywhere, year round in old buildings like these guys do. That would be good for industrial rust belt as a new green industry and export the surplus.

 
O

OppositeDay

Senior Member
Registered Member
LawLeadsToPeace said:
Wait, based on some quick research, the Russians seemed to only have supplied the nuclear fuel for the CFR 600 but did not provide technical assistance to the project. Is there a source that indicates that the Russians helped design the CFR 600?
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The CFR-600 reactor, which was designed and developed by the China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE) with Russian assistance, will be a demonstration sodium-cooled pool-type fast reactor and is expected to begin commercial operation by 2023.
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j17wang

j17wang

Senior Member
Registered Member
zgx09t said:
If it was done through traditional selective breeding to get a new cultivar then it's all the better.
Chinese have been doing stuff like that with plants for ages. Raphis excelsa came to mind.
Upcoming national seed bank would help tremendously in that regard.

Water requirement would be a factor to consider, depending on the availability and region. As a quick rule of thumb for traditional farmers, 10 ton of water is needed to get a ton of yield. Maybe soilless aeroponic vertical farming is the way to go. Wet crops can be grown in dry areas, or anywhere, year round in old buildings like these guys do. That would be good for industrial rust belt as a new green industry and export the surplus.

Click to expand...

Vertical farming needs more emphasis and perhaps a mention in the 2025 economic plan. The industrialization and urbanization of agriculture will also reduce internal supply lines and build resiliency within internal supply chains in the PRC, and is also complimentary to accelerated urbanization plans. China needs to reduce its subsistence population ASAP who don't generate a net contribution to GDP.

One of the issues with India has always been that its only an economy of around 300 million moderately middle-income people. The other billion are just subsistence farmers who are a wash when it comes to GDP, R&D innovation...
 
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