Snapshots of Xinjiang's agricultural elite

Zheng Xuan stresses that teamwork is essential to research. [Photo by Zhou Ye]

Zheng Xuan, 48, a researcher with the Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Reclamation Sciences, is a leading expert in the development of ploughs that can be attached to and is compatible with high horsepower tractors.

Zheng had often visited the rural countryside to teach farmers how to use newly-developed ploughs and adjusted their performance to meet the farmers' various needs. After two years of trials, the 1LFT-550/650, a hydraulic rotary plough developed by Zheng's team, has proven to rival top foreign products.