A team of female sci-tech envoys led by Shi Xinqin is turning a slice of mulberry leaf into a sustainable income source for rural women in eastern China's Shandong Province.

Morning dew glistens on mulberry leaves sprawling across the hills of the Jiaodong Peninsula. Women with baskets pick fresh shoots, while in processing workshops, mulberry leaf tea and pre-made vegetable dishes roll off production lines. This patch of land, now an engine of income for nearly 1,000 households, was once a neglected, barren mountain with unsold saplings just a few years ago.

A mulberry leaf has sparked industrial transformation. Shi Xinqin, a sci-tech envoy and leader of the sericulture innovation team at the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Jiaodong Innovation Center, has taken her research from the lab to the fields, using scientific innovation to solve development bottlenecks and drive rural revitalization.

Rooted in the countryside: Breaking the transformation deadlock

In the hills of Jinshan Town, Zhaoyuan City, more than 4,000 mu (about 267 hectares) of land were once trapped in a development crisis. Hit by a downturn in the nursery stock market, the area was left barren, with local women forced to leave home for work. The local enterprise, Jiuding Yuanxiang Medical Health Co., Ltd., tried quick tourism projects, but they failed to generate lasting prosperity.

In 2021, the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences launched its "Three Breakthroughs" strategy in Zhaoyuan, publicly soliciting solutions to industrial challenges. Shi Xinqin volunteered to take on the grassroots task, working full-time as the company's deputy chief technology officer. Colleagues urged her to stay in the lab, but she said: "Achievements aren't in lab papers, but in the fields that boost farmers' incomes. Development isn't about flashy projects, but about building sustainable industries for generations."

In her first two months, Shi surveyed every inch of the hills, measuring soil moisture and recording climate conditions, rejecting flashy, low-return projects. Drawing on years of sericulture research, she set a course for "planting mulberries, empowering with science, and integrating agriculture, culture, and tourism," giving the barren land a new direction.

Science as a plow: Deepening the industrial chain

With the direction set, six major challenges emerged: breeding, factory construction, processing technology, permits, funding, and standards. Shi Xinqin tackled them all with a dogged determination, using hardcore science to unblock industrial bottlenecks.

To adapt to the Jiaodong climate, she traveled to production areas in southern China to compare over ten mulberry germplasm resources, introduced 150,000 seedlings, and built a 500-mu standard demonstration base for medicinal and edible mulberries. She planned the processing plant layout, matched automated production equipment, and set up three production lines for rapid propagation, mulberry leaf tea, and pre-made mulberry shoots. She helped the company secure all necessary production permits and even donated her team's patented mulberry leaf tea preparation technology to the enterprise.

Facing the biggest bottleneck—funding—Shi meticulously prepared application materials, liaised with provincial and municipal research projects, secured six sericulture research projects, and obtained 4.905 million yuan (about US$680,000) in research funding, injecting vital capital into the industry's transformation. Within two years, products like mulberry leaf tea and mulberry leaf powder hit the market, generating over 2 million yuan in new revenue for the company.

Mulberry fields spread, bringing shared prosperity

Industrial growth must benefit the people. Shi Xinqin has always made it her core mission to drive employment and income growth for rural women, ensuring industrial dividends reach the grassroots.

Offline, she has partnered with women's federations to hold over 40 sericulture training sessions, teaching women hands-on skills like seedling cultivation and leaf picking. Online, she has hosted over 30 industrial briefings on agricultural science livestreams and local media platforms, explaining the benefits of sericulture in simple terms. These efforts have trained more than 40,000 women.

To make sericulture a stable, long-term income source for rural women, Shi established a "leading enterprise + cooperative + farmers" interest-sharing alliance and formed a sericulture industry chain innovation consortium. This has spurred the development of over 3,000 mu of mulberry plantations, covering more than 1,000 households, and increasing annual income for the community by over 3 million yuan. She also planned a 30-mu fruit mulberry picking garden, connected neighboring orchards to create agricultural science tourism demonstration sites, and pushed forward a 8,000-mu recycling agriculture project on barren land, which was selected as a key agricultural project in Yantai City. This has spawned new business formats suitable for women entrepreneurs, such as fruit mulberry picking, handicrafts, and rural dining.

Today, Jiuding Yuanxiang has become a model for sci-tech-empowered rural revitalization under the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences' "Three Breakthroughs" action. A 10,000-mu standard mulberry industry base is being planned, continuously absorbing women's labor and strengthening village collective economies. This replicable model—of female sci-tech envoys helping enterprises, leading enterprises linking farmers, and three-industry integration driving shared prosperity—is now blossoming across the Jiaodong region.