BEIJING — China has called on sci-tech experts to improve their services for spring plowing and the resumption of agricultural production amid the COVID-19 outbreak, an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) said on April 3.

So far, the sci-tech experts have helped set up 11,500 enterprises in rural areas, transforming an average of 26,000 advanced technologies annually and benefiting over 65 million farmers, said He Defang, deputy secretary-general of the ministry at a news conference.

Experts in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality launched an emergency research project to safeguard the supply of fresh food, fruits and vegetables as well as the harvest of spring tea.

The government of South China's Guangdong province has appointed nearly 1,000 sci-tech experts to provide thousands of local farmers in poor villages with technological guidance for spring plowing amid the outbreak.

Experts in East China's Zhejiang province handed out sci-tech manuals to local farmers so as to spread COVID-19 knowledge and speed up the application of advanced technologies in agricultural production.

The system of sending sci-tech experts to rural areas, which has been implemented for more than 20 years, has helped publicize the Party's policies on agriculture, rural areas and farmers, popularize agricultural science and technology, spearhead sci-tech innovation and entrepreneurship in rural areas, and lead villages out of poverty.