A new machine transplanting technology of pot-mat seedling, developed successfully by China National Rice Research Institute (CNRRI) of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) three years ago in 2011, wins great popularity in the rice planting areas mainly in China.

This technology combines rice mat seedling and pot seedling to realize the machine transplanting of pot seedling. Compared with the traditional machine transplanting technology of mat seedling, it reduces percentage of rice seedling damaged, missing seedling per hill and floating seedling, and shorten green turning period, improve the uniformity of seedling number per hill, and increases yield by 5% to 10%.

It also has been recommended as dominant technology of rice production by the Ministry of Agriculture since 2011, and has been widely applied in more than 20 provinces of main rice growing areas in the country. Some statistics show, its annual application area reaches about 2 million hectares in China and covers more than 20% of the areas with rice machine transplanting.

According to CNRRI, the new technology has obtained 11 national invention patents and 10 utility model authorized patents.