As China's largest grain-producing region, Heilongjiang province is seeking to further strengthen its role as the country's "granary" during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30) by boosting yields, protecting its black soil and accelerating agricultural modernization, Governor Liang Huiling said on Thursday.

Addressing a news conference on the province's development blueprint for the next five years, Liang said Heilongjiang will focus on increasing both grain output and production capacity while balancing agricultural development with ecological sustainability.

"We will focus on increasing both production and capacity, as well as balancing production with ecological sustainability to boost both output and income," Liang said. The province will implement a new round of plans to increase grain production by 10 million metric tons, while promoting the integration of high-standard farmland, quality seeds, advanced machinery, modern technologies and supportive policies.

Heilongjiang has ranked first nationwide in grain production for 16 consecutive years. In 2025, the province harvested more than 82 million tons of grain, accounting for about one-ninth of China's total output, according to the governor.

With the world's largest black soil belt and a well-preserved ecological environment, Heilongjiang leads the country in planting area and annual yield of rice, corn and soybeans.

Provincial authorities regard black soil protection as the "lifeline" of grain production and have promoted measures including high-standard farmland construction, erosion gully treatment and farmland shelterbelt renovation.

By the end of 2025, the province had developed more than 8.3 million hectares of high-standard farmland. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, over 90 percent of the province's permanent basic farmland is expected to be upgraded to high-standard farmland.

Liang also stressed the importance of technology in agricultural modernization, saying the province will expand artificial intelligence applications in farming and develop more smart farms supported by intelligent agricultural machinery.

"We seek capacity, yield and quality through technology," Liang said. "We will enhance AI empowerment, expand the application scenarios of the country's first agricultural full-industry-chain large model, build a number of large-scale smart farms, and create future farms supported by intelligent agricultural machinery such as laser weeding robots and unmanned rice transplanters."

The modernization push is already visible in the farms of Beidahuang Group in eastern Heilongjiang. At Qixing farm under the Beidahuang Group's Jiansanjiang branch, farmer Qin Yuqiu recently completed transplanting rice seedlings across his 23 hectares of farmland during the optimal planting period.

Using wide-narrow row transplanters, the seedlings were planted more efficiently and with greater precision, helping shorten the planting process.

According to agricultural technicians at Jiansanjiang, the technology scientifically adjusts row spacing to create better growing conditions for rice. Wider rows improve ventilation and light penetration, reducing the risk of pests and diseases, while narrower rows help conserve seedlings and increase grain spikes, improving photosynthesis efficiency and land use.

Jiansanjiang manages more than 813,000 hectares of arable land, including about 667,000 hectares devoted to high-quality japonica rice, and maintains an average annual grain production capacity of 7 million tons.

In smart agriculture demonstration zones at Qixing and Hongwei farms, operators can set parameters on a screen while rice transplanters automatically follow planned routes through the Beidou Navigation Satellite System, achieving centimeter-level precision in row spacing, plant spacing and planting depth.

Sun Bing, deputy general manager of Jiansanjiang, said the company now operates 19,000 units of unmanned and assisted-driving agricultural machinery, capable of carrying out intelligent farming operations on more than 667,000 hectares annually.

"We are confident that grain yield per unit area will increase by more than 0.5 percent this year," Sun said.