On 2 October 2026, the South China Morning Post reported field trials across China in which scientists said irrigation water treated with sunlight-radiated natural minerals was associated with higher crop yields. The reported gains reached 40.6% for rice, 24.7% for wheat and 45.7% for sugar cane. The trials reportedly ran from Heilongjiang in the northeast to Hainan in the south and covered seven crops. Lu Anhuai, a professor at Peking University’s School of Earth and Space Sciences, said the approach could improve how efficiently plants use sunlight.
But the SCMP headline says yields rose “up to 100%.” Its story reports a 109.5% increase in one sweet-potato trial. That 9.5-point gap is unexplained in the coverage, which also provides no paper or DOI for checking the trial methods.
How sunlight-treated minerals are meant to affect irrigation water
The reports describe natural minerals radiated by sunlight and then used to treat irrigation water. Lu presents the proposed benefit as improved photosynthetic efficiency, or more effective use of sunlight by plants. The account frames the intervention as an alternative to relying only on improved crop varieties or fertilizer.
The mechanism remains underspecified. The cited coverage does not name the minerals, describe the solar exposure, report the water’s chemistry, or detail the field conditions. It also provides no independent measurements showing what changed in the water. Without those details, researchers cannot assess whether the proposed treatment altered a relevant property or whether that alteration could account for the reported yields.
The team said the trials covered rice, wheat, soybeans, peanuts, sweet potatoes, sugar cane and vegetables. That range makes methods and controls especially important: results across different crops and locations need enough detail for other groups to reproduce the comparisons.
The reported crop gains and what the coverage leaves out
SCMP identifies Lu as the team’s lead scientist and reports that he called the method “a new track” in a 22 September interview. The story, written by Chao Kong in Beijing, attributes the yield figures to the scientists behind the trials. Those figures are reported results, not data presented in a paper available in the cited coverage.
To judge a field result, readers need information such as control plots, sample sizes, baseline yields, trial duration and statistical analysis. The Global Agriculture account is another cited report, but the supplied material does not establish it as independent verification. Neither linked account supplies a journal name or DOI. That describes the public record in these reports; it does not prove that no study exists elsewhere or that the reported results are false.
The headline’s “up to 100%” and the body’s 109.5% sweet-potato figure might reflect different editorial choices or an update. The coverage does not explain the discrepancy. It cannot establish that the data were unfinished. A paper or detailed protocol could reconcile the figures and show how the yields were calculated.
Missing methods raise the cost of evaluating the claim
A treatment applied to irrigation water presents a different verification problem from a seed trait or a fertilizer formulation. The account does not identify a measurable property that should change after treatment, or specify how to hold field conditions constant while testing its effect. Weather, soil and farm management can all complicate comparisons, so a reported yield difference alone cannot identify the cause.
That gap affects the commercial case. Anyone considering deployment would need to test the treatment under controlled conditions and compare treated plots with appropriate controls. The first useful evidence would be a full protocol, measured water characteristics and results that another team can reproduce. A large pilot could demonstrate institutional interest, but scale alone would not settle whether the treatment caused the gain.
There may be reasons for a research team to delay publication, including protecting a potential commercial application. The cited reports, however, do not establish that the process is patented, proprietary or deliberately withheld to protect intellectual property. Secrecy might preserve control over a method, but it also prevents outside assessment and makes independent investment harder to justify. An information gap is a diligence cost, not evidence of an IP advantage.
My forecast is that a Chinese provincial authority or state-linked agribusiness may announce a commercial pilot within 12 to 24 months. A reported yield increase without seed replacement could make a water-treatment trial attractive to institutions seeking to test agricultural interventions. That is a forecast, not a conclusion supported by the current reports. A pilot announcement would count as evidence of interest, not proof of efficacy. If no detailed study appears by mid-2028, confidence in the claim will remain constrained; if independent teams reproduce the gains using disclosed methods, that would materially strengthen it.
Farmers would face the consequences of an unverified deployment
Investors evaluating the claim would need to fund water analysis and independent field replication before treating the yield figures as a basis for investment. Research institutions that disclose complete methods could make their results easier to assess, while authorities could test the approach without assuming that a trial announcement validates it.
Farmers would meet the intervention at deployment, after those earlier decisions. If the effect depends on conditions not reported in the coverage, growers could bear the cost of adopting a treatment that fails on their fields. The people with the least access to the underlying methods could carry the most direct operational risk.
The 9.5-point yield gap needs a documented answer
SCMP’s headline says up to 100%; its body reports a 109.5% increase in one sweet-potato trial. The discrepancy is unresolved in the cited coverage, which also leaves the treatment protocol and trial design unavailable for scrutiny.
China’s mineral-treated irrigation water trials therefore remain a reported claim with striking figures and a proposed photosynthesis mechanism. The next meaningful evidence is a paper or protocol that identifies the treatment, documents the comparisons and allows independent teams to test the results. Until then, the 40.6% rice gain remains reported, not independently evaluated.
