【CGTN】SCO 2026: Seeds across the desert: China and Uzbekistan join hands to restore Aral Sea

Once the world's fourth largest lake, the Aral Sea has lost over 90% of its area since the 1960s. In recent years, Chinese and Uzbek scientists have collaborated on restoring its ecosystem and have made promising progress. CGTN's Liu Jiaxin and Aljosa Milenkovic report.

Once, the world's fourth-largest lake. Today, a white expanse of salt and silence. Since the 1960s, the Aral Sea has lost over 90% of its waters. But beneath the cracked earth, a new story is taking root.

LIU JIAXIN Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region "I'm Liu Jiaxin in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. These seeds are about to leave Chinese soil."

ALJOSA MILENKOVIC Nukus, Uzbekistan "I'm Aljosa Milenkovic in Nukus, Uzbekistan. Those same seeds have crossed mountains and rivers – to take root here.

"But will they survive?"

I traveled to the town of Muynak. Sixty years ago, it was a thriving port at the banks of the Aral Sea, and the view from here was entirely different.

The Aral Sea covered around 66,000 square kilometers until the Soviet irrigation projects diverted the two rivers feeding it, primarily to grow cotton, and the water began disappearing.

ABDURASHID MYRZAMBETOV Deputy Director Aral Sea International Innovation Center "The Aral Sea began to dry up in the early 1960s. Unfortunately today it is not possible to fill up that lake again."

Today, around 90% is gone, leaving ships stranded in a new desert called the Aralkum. Тhe damage travels far beyond this former shoreline as winds lift salt and toxic agricultural residues from the exposed seabed, creating dust storms that can carry contaminated particles hundreds of kilometers away.

In Xinjiang, 1,500 kilometers away from Aljosa, the situation is strikingly similar.

LIU JIAXIN Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region "Look at this landscape behind me. A salt lake, white and vast. Xinjiang accounts for over 40% of China's total saline-alkali land. For decades, scientists here have been fighting salt – learning which soils can be restored and which plants can survive."

TIAN CHANGYAN Senior Researcher Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, CAS "It's all salt. Look, you can see it's mostly made up of salt crusts. To cultivate anything here, you first have to understand the characteristics of saline-alkali land. Surveying wild plants in salt marshes is really tough; you have to go out into the wild fields to collect samples. We spent three years studying over 300 species of halophytes in Xinjiang."

"Let me show you Salicornia. See, it's almost growing right into the salt lake. This plant is really impressive – extremely salt-tolerant. Taste it – it's very salty, because it can absorb salt into itself."

It really is salty. Tasting salt-tolerant plants has become a routine practice for these scientists in their work. Through repeated trials, plants that can survive in Xinjiang's saline-alkali soil have also been found to grow in the Aral Sea basin of Uzbekistan.

ZHAO ZHENYONG Researcher Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, CAS "We provided 36 species of salt-tolerant plants to Uzbekistan. Some are salt-accumulating, like salicornia. Some are salt-secreting, like Limonium and tamarisk. Others are salt-rejecting, like reeds. Each plays a unique role in fixing the soil and preventing dust storms."

LIU JIAXIN Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region "Since 2018, researchers from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography have been shuttling between China and Uzbekistan. They've brought salt-tolerant plant seeds – more than 1.3 tons of them to the shores of the Aral Sea."

Uzbekistan – Aljosa

To reduce soil salinity and help vegetation return, another challenge is using less water for cotton, the thirsty crop whose massive irrigation helped drain the Aral Sea in the first place."

TIMUR TORESHOV Laboratory of Plant Physiology and Biotechnology Aral Sea International Innovation Center "Today, the cotton is being irrigated from underground with a drip irrigation system, which has been newly implemented from China. It cuts water consumption by around 40%-50%"

ALJOSA MILENKOVIC Boston, Uzbekistan "From advanced agriculture machinery and precision drip irrigation, to modern precise facilities, China's experience and expertise in cotton production are being put into practice right here in Uzbekistan."

China – Liu Jiaxin

The results are visible. Salt dust storms have weakened. Cotton yields have tripled with drip irrigation. And a green belt more than two million hectares is slowly returning to the basin.

ZHANG YUANMING Director Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, CAS "The seeds carry our desire for science, our pursuit of friendship, and our vision of win-win cooperation. We hope these seeds will take root in the Aral Sea basin and symbolize China's broader commitment to green sustainability."

LIU JIAXIN Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China "So the seeds, which set out from Xinjiang and crossed the desert winds, its answer is – "

ALJOSA MILENKOVIC Uzbekistan "They didn't just survive in the Aral Sea basin. They thrived, branched out, and bore a new generation of hope."

LIU JIAXIN, CGTN, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China.

ALJOSA MILENKOVIC, CGTN, Nukus, Uzbekistan. (CGTN)