Frequent rain since last week has eased drought in north China's Heilongjiang Province, the country's largest commercial grain production base.

Last month the province was plagued by the worst drought in 58 years as it had not received any substantial precipitation from April 22 to late May.

The drought, worsened by hot and windy weather, affected less than 3.7 million hectares of crops, compared with 6 million hectares in late May, local flood control and drought relief authorities said Monday.

The province saw sunny weather on Sunday and Monday, but it will see another round of rain from Tuesday to Thursday, local weather forecasters said Monday.

Local authorities will use rockets and artillery to seed clouds and help produce more rain to ease the severe drought as the raining season started.

The local governments has earmarked 430 million yuan (US$62.9 million) in drought relief efforts.

Farmers were taught to use drip irrigation rather than flood irrigation. They also dug much deeper wells because drought caused lower levels of underground water.

Many seedling crops withered in the unusually dry weather last month and some crop seeds did not even sprout at all. The farmers were left with no choice but to plant again and again.

"The rain could not save the seedling crops as most of them have died,"Yao Dongsheng, a farmer in Tailai County, told Xinhua. "It is much like a crop failure as we have to plant once again."

Farmers in Heilongjiang had replanted 830,000 hectares of crops as of June 3, according to the provincial agricultural commission.

But Liu Qinghai, also from Tailai, said:"If there was no rainfall, the land would be left wasted."

"It was very unusual this year," said Meng Xianchen, a farmer in Mongolian Autonomous County of Dorbod. "For such a long time after the sowing season, there was not any rainfall. In addition, it was so hot and windy."

Heavy wind levelled many field furrows, and seedling crops were buried.

The severe drought also highlighted the lack of irrigation infrastructure in the outlying rural regions. Many farmers had to rely on river water for irrigation, but many rivers has dried up.

Xiao Zhimin, deputy president of Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences, said the drought has eased and many farmers have replanted late crops to reduce losses.

Xiao added that the grain output in Heilongjiang would definitely decline this year, although he could not give an exact prediction.

Heilongjiang is China's major production region of soybean, corn and rice. Its output of soybean accounts for 45 percent of the country's total.

The drought came as a setback as the province aimed to increase grain output to 50 million tonnes in 2012 from 42 million tonnes last year. It sells more than half of the grain on the market.

China's grain output rose 5.4 percent year-on-year to a record 528.5 million tonnes in 2008, official data showed.

(Xinhua News Agency June 9, 2009)