20-story plant factory in Sichuan explores ways to modern agriculture

A 20-story vertical super-plant factory in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan Province, is exploring ways to support the country's modernized agriculture, focusing on intelligent and industrialized crop cultivation.

It is the world's first ultra-high-rise smart vertical plant factory production system, developed by the Institute of Urban Agriculture under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

Wang Sen, chief executive of the institute, said that with automated equipment, plants can be provided with an environment even better than nature, resulting in improvements in both quality and yield.

"As the name suggests, the plant factory grows crops using industrial methods. Light, temperature, water and nutrients are fully automated to create optimal conditions. Land-use efficiency is also extremely high. This 20-story facility can deliver up to 120 times the yield of traditional open-field farming," Wang said.

By minimizing dependence on land and climate conditions, the facility incorporates technological safeguards that allow production to continue even in extreme scenarios. It is also speeding up seed development, a critical pillar of long-term food security.

"This is a wheat breeding accelerator. Traditionally, developing such a new variety takes eight to 12 years. Here, it can be done in just one to one and a half years. In the future, we will expand from staple crops to fruits and vegetables," Wang said.

In Wenjiang District of Chengdu, a base run under the plant factory is in full operation, cultivating strawberries.

"Planted outdoors, a strawberry plant produces about 300 grams a year. In our plant factory, it can reach 1,500 grams. Our technology is globally competitive. More and more countries, such as Uzbekistan, are showing strong interest in our technology. Our future direction of agricultural development is towards an infrastructure-based and intelligent system," said Peng Jie, chairwoman of FutureFarms, an agricultural technology company in Sichuan.

As China looks ahead to the next Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), experts said smarter, facility-based farming in the plant factories is expected to move beyond pilot demonstrations and play a bigger role in the country's long-term food strategy.

20-story plant factory in Sichuan explores ways to modern agriculture

Hungarians voted in parliamentary elections on Sunday, with about 8.1 million people eligible to cast ballots, according to the National Election Office.

Polls opened at 06:00 local time and closed at 19:00, with initial results expected late on Sunday evening.

Of the total, about 7.6 million voters were eligible to cast ballots in person at more than 10,000 polling stations nationwide, while some 500,000 were eligible to vote by mail.

Five parties or alliances are competing in the election. The latest opinion polls showed strong support for both Prime Minister Viktor Orban's ruling Fidesz-Christian Democratic People's Party alliance and the opposition Tisza party led by Peter Magyar.

Among smaller parties, the far-right Our Homeland Movement is seen as having a chance to enter parliament, while others, including the Democratic Coalition and the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party, are widely viewed as unlikely to cross the threshold.

This election marks Orban's fourth parliamentary race since returning to power in 2010, with the outcome set to determine whether he can secure a fifth consecutive term.

Under Hungary's electoral law, parliamentary elections are held every four years. The Hungarian parliament has 199 seats, including 106 filled through direct elections in single-member constituencies and 93 allocated to parties that enter parliament. The party or alliance that secures a majority of seats has the right to form a government.

Hungarians vote in parliamentary elections