The History
Nanjing Institute of Agricultural Mechanization, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (NIAM, MARA, PRC) established in October 1957，is a public national research institute in agricultural engineering. NIAM has a staff of 255 with 21 professors and 59 associate professors in eleven key disciplines, i.e. machinery for tillage and soil preparation, m
achinery for planting and sowing, machinery for underground fruit harvesting, machinery for crop grain harvesting, machinery for crop stalk harvesting, machinery for fruit, vegetable and tea harvesting, equipment for crop protection, agricultural mechanization and system assessment, equipment for agro-product classification and storage, technology and equipment for agro-product processing, and equipment for biomass conversion and utilization. NIAM comprises two grounds, one for research and another for field test. The research site, at Liuying No.100, sits on the south foot of Purple Mountain within Nanjing eastern scenic area, covering 12 hectares with 800,000 sq. The experiment base, located at Baima town of Lishui County in southern Nanjing, covers 15 hectares for the testing on the operational performance of equipment for large field crops, agro-facilities, and precision agriculture. In the early times from her establishment, NIAM developed the first rice motor transplanter in the world, named East Wind - 2S, wining a third prize of the National Invention Award. The development of the muddy field rope traction machine, South -1403, solved the tillage difficulty in the muddy rice field of Lixia river area in Jiangsu province, wining another National Invention Award. The rotary tiller, South -1.5A, as well as its blades were designated as the model equipment for median sized tractors. The automatic long-range sprayer, South- 2604, became widely adopted for the pest and/or disease control of rice field. Those inventions were all in the leading positions either domestically or even globally. From 1978 to the 1990’s, NIAM extended her scope from machinery for ploughing, harrowing, sowing, or harvesting to machinery for food processing, machinery for crop protection, agricultural regionalization, agricultural mechanization intelligence, agricultural machine repairing, and agricultural electronic instrument inspection, etc. From the National Science and Technology Progress Award to various ministerial and provincial awards, the prize winning projects in this period included the mirco-hydraulic generator and auxiliaries for rural households, the test data processing algorithm and instrument for agricultural machines, the work component for rotary tillers and equipment for tractors, the rotary tiller series for small four-wheel tractors, the technology package and equipment of tray seedling for rice fields in southern China, and the methodology of agricultural mechanization for distinct areas, etc. Since the beginning of ‘the Tenth Five-Year Plan, NIAM has further expanded her scope from the in-productions to the before- and the after-productions while expanding the subject from staple grain crops to economic crops, covering food, cotton, oil and sugar, etc. Breakthroughs were achieved in various fields featured by the full production cycle mechanization of rape, the mechanization of cotton harvesting and underground fruit harvesting, the mechanization of tea plantation management, aerial pesticide application, agricultural facility equipment, portable agricultural machinery, biomass energy utilization, and comprehensive utilization of straw. NIAM won 23 awards in this period from Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Jiangsu Provincial Government, or the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, which were featured with the novel backpack powder sprayer, as the only one in the field of agricultural machinery, winning the second prize of the 2001 National Science and Technology Progress Award, the large／median-sized seed processing equipment winning the second prize of the 2009 Jiangsu (provincial) Science and Technology Progress Award, and the mechanization of peanut harvesting equipment won the first prize of the 2010 China Agriculture Progress Award. The ‘the eleventh five year plan’ national survey of agricultural research institutions conducted by Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs ranked NIAM the 47th in comprehensive research capacity among the 1077 organizations, which is the highest place for the field of facility equipment and engineering in agriculture, livestock or fishery, the top place for the field of agriculture machinery, and the 12th place among the 39 institutes of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). The Present
NIAM boasts a systematic agricultural platform consisting laboratories, engineering centers, and a field-test base. In the aspect of laboratories, NIAM has a Key Lab of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in Modern Agricultural Equipment, which supervises 6 other specialty key laboratories and 5 agricultural observation and test stations in the same group of disciplines throughout the country, focusing on the key technologies of common interest to agricultural equipment, e.g. the technology and equipment of common interest to seed processing, seeding and planting, field management, and harvesting, the comprehensive utilization of agricultural resource, as well as precision agricultural technology and intelligent equipment. In the aspect of engineering centers, NIAM has Southern China Seeds Processing Engineering Center of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Jiangsu Provincial Crop Harvesting Engineering Center, Jiangsu Provincial Pesticide Application Engineering Center, and CAAS Agricultural Engineering Center. These centers are dedicated to the research and development as well as the commercialization of the equipment for seed processing, harvesting, and crop protecting. In the aspect of national modern agricultural technology systems, NIAM has two mechanical function departments, one for oil rape and the other for peanut, with seven experts in the systems of oil rape, peanut, tea, hemp, sweet potato and edible fungus, respectively. NIAM is a member of the national science innovation strategic alliances in agricultural equipment, biogas, and hemp industry, a member of the agricultural equipment coordinated innovation center of Jiangsu province, and that of Shandong province as well. In the aspect of research facilities, NIAM has a 3,000 sq. pre-production test center, 40 science instruments over ¥100,000 each, a library over 30,000 books and over 180 academic journals, supporting her innovation.. In the aspect of industrial associations, NIAM affiliates the Science and Technology Branch of China's Agricultural Mechanization Association, the Rotary Tillage Machinery Branch of China's Agricultural Machinery Industry Association, Jiangsu Province Society of Agricultural Engineering, etc. NIAM has the National Quality Supervision and Test Center of Crop Protection Equipment, the Quality Supervision and Test Center of Cleansing and Crop Protection Machinery of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Quality Inspection Center of Tillage Mechanical Products of China Machinery Industry, and the Quality Supervision and Test Center of Tea Processing Equipment of China Machinery Industry. In addition, NIAM has a National Agricultural Mechanization Training Center, a National Post Doctoral Work Station, a doctoral-degree program and 4 master-degree programs in agricultural mechanization engineering and other fields. Envision to Future
NIAM aims to be the leading research institute in the world focusing on the agricultural mechanization in fundamentals, applications, and major applications in 5 to 10 years, taking up the following challenges:
1. To meet the demand of national strategy
NIAM will continue to endeavor for the cause of agricultural mechanization, pushing forward research in the fundamentals, applications, and major applications, solving the problems of common, prospective, or key interests in science and technology, improving research in public policy of agricultural mechanization, and contributing to the preparation of national policies and strategic plans for the development of agricultural mechanization.
2. To support the technology development of the mechanization industry. NIAM will keep on providing extensive consultancy services covering the strategic planning of the development of agricultural technology and equipment. NRIAM will also participate actively in domestic and international academic workshops to boost technology exchange, in the public functional services of product certificating, evaluating and promoting by performing national and provincial supervision and inspection of agricultural machinery, and in the systematic development of technical standards in agricultural mechanization.
3. To solve the ‘three rural issues’
NIAM will persist to perform the transferring, testing, and promoting of new equipment, new technology, and new products in order to solve the ‘three rural issues’ involving agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, in the forms of testing and demonstrating the integration of engineering and agronomy, providing advanced national engineering and management vocational training, and graduate education of master’s degree in agricultural mechanization.
4. To promote inter-disciplinary development within CAAS. NIAM will further advance the combination between agronomic technology and agricultural machinery in the collective effort with other branches of CAAS in the work of assessing the approaches to the mechanization of agricultural technologies and evaluating the compatibility of new breeds with mechanization potential of agronomy technologies.
