China has developed an advanced sand-solidifying technology which will be used along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway to protect the highest railway in the world from the ravages of the desert.

The development, named "OH sand-solidifying and foliage-planting technology", is being tested in Qinghai, a sand eroded province in northwest China, a local scientist said.

"The main part of the technological development is a special kind of sand-solidifying drug," said Li Runjie, chief of the project under the Qinghai Provincial Water Conservancy and Hydropower Scientific Research Institute.

According to the experiment, after sowing grass seeds, pouring water and fertilizer into a plot of sand, the treatment was sprayed on the sand surface. In one to two hours, the sand became solid. Grass grew out of the solid sand in about 15 days.

"The chemical treatment, which is able to solidify the sand into a rubber-like solid earth, has no poisonous or harmful elements," the expert claims.

Editor: Carolyn