Harvesting is in progress at Gansu Jiuquan Flower Seed Production Base, with an annual output of up to 15 million kilograms.

At present, 119,500 acres of flower seed production fields in Jiuquan City, Gansu Province are gradually entering the intensive harvest period. Unlike ordinary ornamental flower fields, what is harvested here is not flowers, but flower seeds. So, how to harvest a good seed? How to ensure quality?

The reporter came to a flower seed production base in Suzhou District, Jiuquan City, Gansu Province. In the same base, flowers are blooming on one side, and flowers have faded and set seeds on the other side. Because what is harvested here is not flowers, but seeds. For seed production flowers, harvesting begins gradually after the flowers fade.

Compared with ordinary ornamental flowers, the goals of seed production are full seeds, high purity, and good maturity. Therefore, the conditions required for seed production and flower fields are not exactly the same.

This year, the flower seed production area in Jiuquan City has reached 119,500 acres, and the flower seed supply accounts for about 70% of the national seed supply. Why can Jiuquan become a flower seed production base? Because the average annual sunshine hours here exceed 3,300 hours, the temperature difference between day and night is large, and there is less rainfall during the seed maturity period, it is suitable for seed growth, accumulation, and maturity. Coupled with the guarantee of irrigation by snow water from the Qilian Mountains, Jiuquan is not only suitable for growing flowers, but also suitable for breeding flowers into seeds.

To measure the quality of seeds, variety purity is an important indicator. If the purity of the seeds is reflected in their appearance, it means that the plant height and color of the flowers are stable. In order to prevent the occurrence of pollen, spatial isolation is used during sowing, allowing different types of flowers to be neighbors, forming a natural isolation zone to ensure the purity of the seeds.

For example, marigolds in their peak flowering stage and cosmos that have entered the harvesting stage, although they grow in adjacent plots, have different types, different growth cycles, and different harvesting times.

The time for harvesting flower seeds is also particular. Local farmers told reporters that taking cosmos as an example, seeds on the same plant may mature earlier or later. If picked too early, the seeds will not be full enough; if picked too late, the seeds will be easily blown off by the wind due to maturity issues, causing weight loss.

How to tell if seeds are mature? Local farmers have a few tips. First, check whether the stems and flower disks have dried and changed color. Pick off a flower head and gently rub it open. The elongated black particles are cosmos seeds. Pinch it with your fingernails and you will feel the seeds are firm and plump.

Despite the small size of the flower heads, each cosmos flower here can produce 30 to 40 seeds. A single cosmos plant has 35 to 40 flowers, and one acre of land can produce dozens of kilograms of seeds. In the past, farmers had to cut with a sickle, dry it on the ground, and then use a broom to collect the fallen seeds, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive. Now, some improved machines have begun to be used locally to assist harvesting.

Harvesting flower seeds is different from harvesting wheat or corn. Flower seeds are small and light. If the air volume of an ordinary harvester is too high, the seeds may be blown directly out of the grass discharge port, causing the seeds to leak. Local farmers have improved their harvesters with collection devices and temporary storage bins, and the air volume is adjusted according to the size and weight of the seeds to minimize leakage. The machine harvests not only seeds, but also flower receptacles, branches, leaves and dust. After this, it is necessary to go through preliminary drum screening, vibration screening and winnowing to gradually separate the seeds from fine impurities and become seeds with a purity of 95%, which means that there are less than 5 grams of impurities in 100 grams.

Currently, different varieties of flower seeds in Jiuquan are gradually maturing, and the harvest is expected to last until October. The flower seeds here may sprout again in other cities in the country or across the ocean in a few months.

A flower seed’s journey to the sea

Harvesting is only the first step. To turn these flower seeds into commodities that can be sown and exported, they must go through multiple steps such as screening, processing, quality testing, and customs quarantine. How does a flower seed travel from the field to the market?

In Jinfosi Town, Suzhou District, Jiuquan, Gansu Province, flower seed production mainly adopts the "enterprise + cooperative + farmer" model, that is, the enterprise places an order, the cooperative organizes farmers to carry out standardized planting, and the harvested seeds are purchased by the enterprise. What varieties farmers plant, how much they plant, and even the purchase price are all signed in the contract from the beginning.

The flower seeds just collected from the fields are also mixed with receptacles, stems and leaves, dust and underdeveloped seed grains. In order to select qualified parts, in-depth processing and multiple rounds of screening are required.

Yu Yongwu, the person in charge of a flower seed production company: The steps of deep processing are winnowing selection, eye selection, specific gravity selection, and color selection. After the final color-sorted seeds pass the random inspection, our seeds will be sent to the laboratory to test purity, germination rate, and moisture content. After the indicators meet the standards, we will package them into small bags specified by the state, including traceable QR codes, and finally circulate them to the market.

At present, Jiuquan flower seeds are mainly herbal flowers, and the supply accounts for about 70% of the national herbal flower seeds, and the export accounts for half of the domestic flower seed exports.

Chen Chen, deputy director of the Suzhou District Seed Industry Development Bureau: Domestic sales are to create flower landscapes for various places across the country, while export sales are mainly the export of seeds, mainly in Southeast Asia and some regions in Europe.

In order to prevent quarantine pests from spreading cross-border with seeds, the local customs moved the supervision link forward. During the seedling and maturity stages of crops, staff came to the export seed breeding base to conduct epidemic monitoring; in order to make the export of flower seeds more convenient, the customs opened a "green channel" for local inspection of flower seed production enterprises to improve the efficiency of customs clearance of seeds.

Liu Yang, Deputy Commissioner of Jiuquan Customs: For small shipments of seeds, inspections can be carried out on arrival, which can shorten the inspection time by more than 50% compared with the traditional model.

From January to August this year, Jiuquan City's export value of various seeds reached 250 million yuan, of which the export value of herbal and flower plant seeds exceeded 25 million yuan. Jiuquan City has now built 6 germplasm resource banks, collecting and preserving 15,000 copies of various flower germplasm resources and breeding materials. It is expected that the city's annual flower seed production output will reach 15 million kilograms this year.

(Headquarters reporters Zhang Lei, Cui Linxin, Ding Ning, Yang Qingbo, Zheng Zhong)