China has reaped 313.18 million mu (20.88 million hectares) of summer wheat by June 20, or 90.2 percent of the total, the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) said Saturday.

MOA official said the achievement was made after the wheat-growing areas countered the extreme weather including hail, heavy rain and strong winds to harvest wheat.

About 440,000 reaping machines were put into operation this year to take on 84 percent of the task, said the ministry.

Harvest in the provinces of Yunan, Sichuan, Hubei, Henan, Jiangsu, Anhui and the city of Chongqing have been finished. Work in the northwestern Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia, and the northern Shanxi and Hebei are still going on.

China is expected to reap 122.5 million tonnes of summer grain this year, said the MOA on June 12.

This will be the sixth year in a row for China to achieve grain output growth.

(Xinhua News Agency June 21, 2009)