A newly invented vegetation-planting machine gives hope to the effort to control desertification that has haunted the north China region for years.

The machine can work two to three hectares of land per day, said the Institute of of Botany under the Chinese Academy of Sciences after the technical appraisal.

Trial operations of the machine in about 67,000 hectares of pasture in Inner Mongolia, north China, since 2004 show the forage grass planted with the machine survived the harsh winter and spring seasons in the desertified land, and no wind-blown sand is spotted in the planted areas.

Weighing 12 tons, the 2.8-meter-high and 6.6-meter-long machine can move swiftly in the desert, and complete the whole procedure of water spraying, ditch digging, sowing, fertilizing, and moisture layer forming in 5 minutes, said experts from the botany institute.

China now has 1.74 million square kilometers of desertified land, mostly in the north.

China's decade-long desertification control efforts have already yielded some effect since last year, according to an official in the forestry sector. Wind- and sand-control projects and reforestation helped add greenery to over 18 percent of the country's land in 2005.

Source: Xinhua