During the harvest season, the vast lands of China unfold a beautiful picture. In Science and Technology Backyards across the country, groups of students from China Agricultural University have taken root in the fields, standing firm on the front lines of agricultural production, offering a harvest tribute to the Republic's anniversary.
In the flower greenhouses of Jinning District, Kunming City, Yunnan Province, post-harvest preservation is being carried out in an orderly manner; in the orchards of Ordos City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, plant protection drones are flying through to apply pesticides; at the composting site in Quzhou County, Hebei Province, chicken manure has become a "password to increased income" for farmers; in the fruit and vegetable bases of Miyun District, Beijing, agricultural products are sold through livestreaming and delivered to residents' dining tables... The Science and Technology Backyard training model is to station graduate students on the front lines of production, allowing students to face real problems in agricultural and rural development while completing their classroom studies. Walking out of the ivory tower and into the fields, groups of young people take root in Science and Technology Backyards, injecting fresh youthful strength into the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas.
Shedding Bookishness and Growing Real Skills Rooted in the Earth
Can knowledge from textbooks be used in the fields? Entering the CAU-Yuntianhua Flower Science and Technology Backyard in Jinning District, Kunming City, a strong floral fragrance mixed with the smell of soil rushes toward you, and tens of thousands of "roses" (cut flower roses) are blooming in competition. Zhou Yuhao, a doctoral student at the College of Horticulture of China Agricultural University, has been stationed here for nearly 600 days.
"In the laboratory, temperature, humidity, and light can all be precisely controlled, and disease prevention and control also follows established rules. But here, many methods from books just 'don't adapt to the local conditions.'" When Zhou Yuhao first walked into the post-harvest workshop and saw workers throwing large bundles of dehydrated and moldy flowers into the waste flower bin, it was like watching his own child sick with a fever, and he was filled with heartache.
The rainy season in Yunnan stretches from May to November, covering most of the "rose" growing cycle. In the humid and stuffy air, gray mold and downy mildew breed wantonly, becoming the main culprits of pre-harvest and post-harvest losses of fresh flowers. "I've grown flowers my whole life, and I fear the rainy season the most. When the sky wants to rain and the temperature changes, squatting in the greenhouse every day to watch over them is useless. After one rain, a whole season's hard work is all washed away," a flower farmer sighed.
To solve this problem, Zhou Yuhao took fresh flower preservation and reducing storage and transportation losses as his research topic, repeatedly conducting experiments on gray mold prevention, dehydration regulation, and pretreatment preservation. The cut flower post-harvest preservation technology system built by the backyard research team greatly reduced post-harvest losses. "Every day in the fields and greenhouses, squatting with flower farmers to find problems and improve technology, the days are especially grounded." In the fall of 2025, Zhou Yuhao successfully transferred to doctoral studies and continues to be stationed on the Yunnan Plateau.
The soil of Science and Technology Backyards is the most demanding, but also the most nourishing. Here, students gradually shed their bookishness and grow real skills rooted in the earth.
Morning dew wets the cuffs of their pants, and when bending down to pull weeds, soil gets embedded in their fingernails. At the Beijing Tongzhou Vegetable Science and Technology Backyard, Bian Haotian, a master's student at the College of Resources and Environmental Sciences of China Agricultural University, goes to the fields with workers at 5 a.m. "Before coming to the backyard in February last year, I had never really grown sweet potatoes," he said.
How to mix water and fertilizer? How to control irrigation volume? How thick should the plastic film be? These questions, for which textbooks have no standard answers, made Bian Haotian blush when he first arrived at the backyard. To find the answers, he set a rule for himself: no matter how busy he was, he had to squat in the field for half an hour every day and "chat" with the sweet potato field. Parting the potato vines to look at leaf color, turning over the soil ridges to check root thickness, using instruments to detect soil moisture... Bian Haotian unconsciously accumulated hundreds of sweet potato photos on his phone.
More than a year of stationing polished him from a "farming novice" into a "planting expert," and his skin tanned two shades darker. "This year, the town's joint management company planted more than 40 mu of sweet potatoes and asked me to be the technical advisor. From seedling raising to harvest, it's like raising a child. I'm now a qualified 'parent' to them." Standing at the edge of the field, looking at the sweet potatoes in the ground, Bian Haotian smiled especially happily.
The land is a profound textbook, and the fields are the best classroom. Teachers and students in the backyard discover research problems in practice, understand farmers through eating, living, and working together, and use the knowledge they have learned to serve actual production.
Making It Understandable, Learnable, and Actionable for Local Farmers
Can new technologies from the laboratory be used by local farmers? The propeller turns from slow to fast, and the liquid medicine is pressed out finely from the nozzle, dispersing into a thin mist in the mountain wind and falling evenly among the layered branches and leaves of the apple trees. In Nuanshui Township, Jungar Banner, Ordos City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, students from the Jungar Apple Science and Technology Backyard are helping fruit farmer Hua Shengming operate a plant protection drone, completing in one day what used to take three or four days.
As a veteran in fruit tree cultivation, Hua Shengming was initially hesitant: this drone thing flies in the sky, can it really spray more accurately than a person spraying plant by plant in the field? The backyard students did not rush to persuade Hua Shengming; instead, they brought the drone to the orchard. Zoned pesticide application, precise mixing ratios, battery rotation... at every step, the students squatted in the orchard demonstrating for him one step at a time. "For new equipment such as plant protection drones and target-oriented sprayers, we conduct 'immersive' demonstrations for fruit farmers. Let local farmers truly understand, learn, and dare to use them," said Asikaibieke Kali, a master's student at the College of Science of China Agricultural University.
"You really have to admire these new technologies. Traditional manual pesticide application takes several days to cover the whole orchard, while a drone can finish in one day, saving time and labor and spraying evenly." Now, Hua Shengming and the backyard students have together become "promotion ambassadors," guiding more and more surrounding fruit farmers to adopt new technologies. "Through graduate students stationed at Science and Technology Backyards, we accelerate the cultivation of local new farmers who understand technology and know how to operate it, injecting scientific and technological momentum into the green quality improvement and cost reduction and efficiency increase of the mountain apple industry," introduced Professor He Xiongkui, chief expert of the Jungar Apple Science and Technology Backyard and dean of the Agricultural Drone Systems Research Institute of China Agricultural University.
Since being stationed at the Beijing Pinggu Smart Agriculture Science and Technology Backyard in February 2025, Zhao Keyao, a master's student at the College of Science of China Agricultural University, has taken the intelligent upgrading of pear orchard pesticide application equipment as her research topic, promoting the transformation of pesticide application methods from manual backpack tanks and pull-tube spraying to fixed pipeline spray systems. The team's research and development results have achieved integrated remote management of irrigation, fertilization, and frost protection, precisely and efficiently safeguarding pear yield and quality.
As more and more young people who understand agriculture and technology flock to the fields, the future development path of China's agriculture is becoming wider and wider.
Making Farmers' Wallets Increasingly Fuller
Science and Technology Backyards are continuously being promoted. How are farmers' returns? "When I first came last year, whenever I saw mountains of chicken manure, I couldn't help but put on two masks," said Liu Yichun, a master's student at the College of Resources and Environmental Sciences of China Agricultural University. The Baizhai Integrated Planting and Breeding Science and Technology Backyard is located in Quzhou County and is the first Science and Technology Backyard in the country. Quzhou is a major laying hen breeding county with a huge inventory. If the daily manure cannot be properly treated, it will transform from a "resource" into a "source of pollution."
"At first, I never thought scientific research would have anything to do with chicken manure. It wasn't until I saw Teacher Wang Hongliang persist on the path of chicken manure resource utilization for more than ten years that I gradually understood that agricultural research cannot avoid the most difficult problems and cannot do without the most down-to-earth sites," said Liu Yichun.
At the backyard, she and her partners set up a simple work shed beside the composting site. When the weather was hot, sweat often ran down their cheeks. Following the farmers to clean the pens and remove manure, she gradually figured out the characteristics of the manure. "Based on experimental results, processing 1,000 tons of chicken manure per year is expected to produce about 80 tons of fresh black soldier fly larvae and 300 tons of insect sand. The larvae can be processed into high-protein feed, and the insect sand is a high-quality organic fertilizer, with an annual output value of about 550,000 yuan," Liu Yichun introduced.
The "income increase account" of Science and Technology Backyards is making farmers' wallets increasingly fuller. Every morning at 6 a.m., she goes to the fields to arrange corn harvesting, then sorting and packaging. After 9 a.m., she begins receiving offline customers, handling online orders, and packing and shipping express deliveries... At the Beijing Miyun Fruit and Vegetable Science and Technology Backyard, Wang Zifei, a master's student at the College of Resources and Environmental Sciences of China Agricultural University, often simultaneously plays the roles of livestream host, customer service representative, and operations staff.
"Once, when I went to the village committee to report on work, I saw village staff gathered around a computer for more than an hour, but the network just wouldn't connect. They were so anxious they were sweating profusely." Wang Zifei went over, looked down at the network cable interface, found that the crystal head was loose, and with a raise of her hand aligned it to the port with a "click" push, and the network icon in the lower right corner of the screen instantly lit up. Behind her, a villager couldn't help but exclaim: "It really has to be these college students! We struggled for a long time and couldn't fix it, and they solved it in two or three minutes."
"It turns out that those little things I took for granted were especially impressive in the eyes of the villagers. Seeing the villagers also working hard to learn livestreaming, shoot videos, and process orders, I increasingly feel the meaning of being here," said Wang Zifei. In 2025, the Miyun Fruit and Vegetable Science and Technology Backyard promoted a total income increase of more than 200,000 yuan for villagers. At present, the backyard's service scope covers multiple surrounding villages, continuously broadening agricultural product sales channels and promoting industrial upgrading.
Up to now, nearly 300 training units across the country have established more than 5,000 Science and Technology Backyards, with more than 10,000 experts and 22,000 graduate students stationed there. China Agricultural University's 18 graduate training units have jointly built and operated 233 Science and Technology Backyards at home and abroad, covering 30 domestic provinces and five countries: Malawi, Brazil, Thailand, Kazakhstan, and Tanzania. Batch after batch of students uphold the spirit of "seeking hardship voluntarily," continuing to strive on the stage of comprehensive rural revitalization, letting seeds of hope bear abundant fruits belonging to the future in the vast fields.
Link: Construction History of China Agricultural University's Science and Technology Backyards
In 2009, the team of Academician Zhang Fusuo of China Agricultural University established the country's first Science and Technology Backyard in Quzhou, Hebei, focusing on solving the disconnect between agricultural research, production needs, and talent cultivation. Starting in 2010, China Agricultural University launched the national layout of Science and Technology Backyards, gradually forming a new talent cultivation system oriented toward green agricultural development and dedicated to knowing and loving agriculture. In 2024, "promoting the Science and Technology Backyard model" was written into the Central Document No. 1 for the first time. From version 1.0's participatory scientific and technological innovation service model, to version 2.0's whole-industry-chain empowerment model, and then to version 3.0's multifunctional integration model boosting rural revitalization, the development of Science and Technology Backyards has gradually matured. In 2026, the development of Science and Technology Backyards entered the 4.0 era, deeply cultivating ecological civilization domestically and promoting the model overseas internationally.