New breakthroughs bloom in harvest season as solid work drives rural revitalization. As autumn spreads its golden carpet and granaries brim with abundance, walking into the chili pepper planting base at the Modern Agriculture Demonstration Park on the southern shore of Ulansuhai in Wulate Front Banner reveals bright red peppers hanging heavy on the branches, with workers busy harvesting and loading them up.

This year, the park's selected and cultivated sauce pepper variety "Beixing No. 1" achieved a measured yield of 4,559 kilograms per mu, setting a new record for sauce pepper yield per mu in the autonomous region. This marks yet another occasion that Wulate Front Banner has broken the autonomous region's crop yield record, following corn and wheat, achieving a major breakthrough in the production capacity of specialty cash crops.

Harvesting chili peppers

"This year the park selected high-yield, high-quality pepper varieties such as 'Beixing No. 1' and 'Beixing No. 6,' and also planted some experimental varieties on a trial basis. Relying on scientific field management and standardized planting techniques, the peppers grew far better than in previous years, with both yield and quality achieving dual improvements. Among them, 'Beixing No. 1,' bred by the Autonomous Region Academy of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Sciences, performed outstandingly in recent yield measurements, reaching 4,559 kilograms per mu," said Bai Enze, Chairman of Inner Mongolia Hexing Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Co., Ltd.

These impressive high-yield results and excellent quality are by no means accidental—they are the fruitful outcome of deep integration of good farmland, good seeds, good methods, and good technology, combined with coordinated efforts from government, industry, academia, and research institutions. The park relies on the unique water, soil, light, and heat resources of the southern shore of Ulansuhai, continuously carrying out farmland improvement and soil fertilization to steadily enhance soil fertility and build a solid foundation for high pepper yields. The park deeply connects with multiple research institutes, adhering to both independent breeding and introduction screening, selecting high-resistance, high-yield, high-color-value pepper seeds suited to the climate and soil of the Hetao Irrigation District, tapping into yield-increasing potential from the source. It innovatively promotes scientific and standardized planting models, integrating a series of advanced agricultural technologies, with a focus on experiments in mechanized densified high-yield pepper planting models, exploring furrow-film ridge cultivation, flat planting, and ridge-film mulching densified high-yield models, building a mechanized, high-density, high-productivity pepper planting technology system and driving intelligent upgrading of pepper cultivation. It deeply connects with research platforms at all levels including the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China Agricultural University, the Autonomous Region Academy of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Sciences, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, and the Municipal Academy of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Sciences, relying on a "five-level linkage, multi-party coordination, integrated demonstration, and radiating drive" work system to bridge the "last mile" from laboratory research to farmland application. In terms of management, it adheres to pairing good seeds with good methods, achieving on-demand supply of water, fertilizer, and pesticides through smart irrigation, drone field patrols, and intelligent pest monitoring, reducing resource waste while ensuring a stable growing environment for peppers. Through the "human-machine-environment-agronomy" intelligent interaction demonstration, the park has established a full-chain technical standard from seed selection, sowing, and field management to harvesting, striving to build a standardized, intelligent, and intensive high-standard modern agricultural science and technology experimental demonstration base.

"Every year we introduce new technologies and new varieties to the park for experimentation, and promote the mature innovative technologies throughout the entire banner. This year, the park introduced autonomous drone field patrols, intelligent pest detection, and smart integrated water-fertilizer precision irrigation systems, and also cooperated with research institutes and universities to implement advanced planting models such as ridging, flat planting, and four-row single-film planting, further improving crop yield and quality. According to calculations, pepper yield can increase by 10%, and color value can improve by one to two grades," introduced Liu Jun, Director of the Wulate Front Banner Agricultural Technology Promotion Center. "Currently, the park's peppers have formed a mature dual-direction sales pattern both domestically and internationally. Fresh peppers are mainly sold to Sichuan, Guizhou, and other places for sauce processing; a portion of dried peppers is exported to Europe, America, and other countries, widely used in natural pigment extraction."

Harvesting chili peppers

Park demonstrations drive innovation technology promotion across the entire region. In recent years, Wulate Front Banner has leveraged the modern agricultural development advantages of the Ulansuhai watershed, continuously carrying out seed improvement research and integrated technology demonstrations, promoting and applying them throughout the banner, and repeatedly setting new highs for crop yields per mu in the autonomous region. In 2023, the corn demonstration field in Dashetai Town reached 1,421.5 kilograms per mu, breaking the autonomous region's 1,400-kilogram corn yield threshold for the first time and setting a new corn high-yield record. In 2024, the hundred-mu corn demonstration field in Nanyuan Village, Dashetai Town, achieved 1,473.27 kilograms per mu, and the ten-thousand-mu contiguous corn field reached 1,266.2 kilograms per mu, once again rewriting the autonomous region's corn yield record. In 2025, the hundred-mu and thousand-mu corn fields in Sudulun Town and Erdenbulag Sumu achieved 1,480.34 kilograms and 1,421.77 kilograms per mu respectively, breaking the autonomous region's corn high-yield record for the third time. This year, the sauce pepper varieties selected and cultivated at the Modern Agriculture Demonstration Park on the southern shore of Ulansuhai broke the autonomous region's sauce pepper yield record, achieving a new leap from grain crops to high-yield breakthroughs in specialty cash crops.

Harvesting chili peppers

Behind each new record lies the support of technological forces such as drone field patrols and smart integrated water-fertilizer precision irrigation systems, and it is inseparable from the systematic efforts of joint research by universities and institutes, farmland quality improvement, seed selection, method integration, and multi-party coordination. From "farming by experience" to "deep cultivation by technology," Wulate Front Banner continues to optimize planting structure, promote advanced planting techniques, extend agricultural industry chains, continuously broaden sales channels, enhance the benefits of specialty crop cultivation, and transform high-yield records achieved through research into tangible income for the people, allowing the effects of technology-empowered agriculture to continuously manifest and paving an ever-wider path for rural revitalization.