Du devotes to potato research for 30 years

Du Chunyong(L) in the potato field. (Photo by Yunnan Daily)

Du Chunyong, a prominent talent and figure in the potato industry of Xundian county, central Yunnan’s Kunming city, has been devoting to studying potato plantation for 30 years.

After graduating from a senior high school in 1987, Du studied in the school of biology in Yunnan Normal University. At that time, the school has a research institute special for tuber crops. Experts and excellent students there mainly studied potatoes.

On seeing the plantlets for tissue culture and various types of potatoes in the lab, Du was surprised. “I came from a cold highland area, and I grew up eating potatoes there. Now, I want to do deep research in potatoes to make contribution to my hometown,” said Du to his teacher, who was touched and allowed him to join the lab.

Graduating from university in 1991, Du became a biology teacher. He continued his study in potatoes. To support him, his family gave him several fields for pilot study. He planted several breeds in one field.

In 1996, Du noticed that the quality and output of potatoes in his hometown, Liushao town of Xudian county, were very low. Villagers planting potatoes lived a tough life with low income. Du decided to solve the problem. Then, Du went back and taught potato plantation technology in the adult technical school of Liushao town.

To find the potato suitable for deep processing, Du almost went to every vegetable markets in Dali, Baoshan and Dehong in 2001. Finally, he found “Zhongdianhong”, a potato breed of good quality, in Yingjiang county, west Yunnan’s Dehong Dai and Jingpo autonomous prefecture.

Zhongdianhong often becomes ripe in March. Du decided to buy them up immediately and supply them to a crisp company in Shanghai.

Du didn’t stop his purchase. In 2005, he bought 3,800 tons of another breed of potato called “Daxiyang” through contract farming in Yingjiang, causing a sensation in the potato deep-processing market in southwest China. Meanwhile, the potatoes in Dehong were sold to multiple Chinese cities like Shanghai, Ningbo, Changsha, Harbin, Nanning, Guangzhou and Chengdu.

To help the villagers adapt to the development of potato industry, Du led other 93 families in the village in founding a cooperative with a filed of 1,520 mu (about 1.01 square kilometer). This reduced the cost on growing each mu of potato by 260 yuan.

Starting from 2020, the cooperative bought sets of agricultural machinery like planting machinery and drones. The efficiency of producing virus-free potatoes became 7 to 12 times higher than before.

With the joint hard work for more than a decade, the breeding base of virus-free potatoes was built in 2022.

Now, the potato planting area of Liushao town has expanded to 130,000 mu from less than 80,000 mu two decades ago. The output value last year reached 373 million yuan, and the per capita income for local farmers reached 18,000 yuan .

In Xundian county, the planting area reached 200,000 mu with an annual output of more than 400,000 tons. Potato has become the county's pillar industry.

Source: Yunnan Daily; trans-editing by Wang Yunya