Date palms donated by UAE planted in China’s Hainan

The Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences in Wenchang City in south China’s Hainan Province on Saturday started planting a new batch of date palm seedlings donated by the United Arab Emirates.

They were part of the second batch of 23,500 seedlings donated by the UAE to China for agricultural cooperation.

The first batch of 1,500 date palm seedlings was planted in Wenchang in 2021, with around 93 percent of the plants surviving after three years and some of them already starting to bear fruit.

“We are comprehensively promoting the multi-point trial planting of date palms in Hainan, Yunnan, Fujian and other places. And we are preparing to establish a joint modern-agriculture laboratory on date palm, which will cover the whole industrial chain and carry out research in aspects including accurate evaluation of date palm germplasm resources, seeds and efficient cultivation, comprehensive prevention and control of diseases and pests, and deep processing. All these will inject new impetus into the high-quality development of the global date palm industry,” said Hu Wei, director of the date palm research center at the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences.

Date palm cultivation is an important bridge for China to deepen cooperation with Arab countries. According to an agreement between the two countries, the UAE will donate 100,000 date palm seedlings to China.