In the future, 70% of the labor cost of cotton planting can be saved by full mechanization.

In recent years, the Cotton Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in conjunction with Nanjing Institute of Agricultural Mechanization, has stepped up the research and development of cotton mechanization in the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin, realizing the integration of agronomic and agricultural machinery, and basically realizing mechanization in the whole process. it can save about 70% of the labor cost of planting cotton.

Cotton is not only one of the most important cash crops in China, but also a labor-intensive crop.

Cotton is not only one of the most important cash crops in China, but also a labor-intensive crop. At present, the decline of the comparative benefit of cotton planting and the high cost of human input are the bottleneck factors that limit the development of China's cotton industry. The promotion of mechanized cotton planting has become the fundamental way out of cotton development, which is conducive to ensuring the sustainable development of China's cotton production.

In recent years, with the support of the national cotton industry technology system, industry scientific research projects and other major national science and technology plans, and the promotion of the scientific and technological innovation project of the institute, the Cotton Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, together with Nanjing Agricultural Mechanization Institute, has intensified the research and development of cotton mechanization in the Yellow River and Yangtze River areas, and realized the integration of agronomic and agricultural machinery. According to the characteristics of machine picking cotton, a new cotton variety suitable for machine picking has been developed, which has the characteristics of concentrated boll opening, high initial node of fruit branch, outstanding high yield and stable yield, which lays a foundation for popularizing cotton harvest mechanization. The use of biodegradable plastic film mulching can reduce farmland plastic film pollution and reduce the high-intensity field film-opening operation of cotton farmers, and mechanized harvesting is adopted in the harvest period. The whole process has basically been mechanized, saving about 70% of the labor cost of planting cotton.