A local villager pumps water to irrigate his wheat farmland at Hancun Township in Huaibei City, east China's Anhui Province, Feb. 17, 2009. Local residents continue to water their wheat seedlings to ensure the growth after the most severe drought hit northern and eastern China in half a century. [Chen Banggan/Xinhua]

In rural areas of Changge, some 530,000 mu out of the 550,000 mu of wheatland has been irrigated by using well water, according to Ma Genqing, a Changge city water resource official. The city drilled more than 200 new wells for irrigation and now has about 1,100.

"With the new irrigation facilities, the drought won't have a major impact on this year's harvest as sunlight, important for wheat growth, is rich here," said Qiu, 36, while turning the soil around his crops to keep it from drying out.

In Gangli Village, Shigu Town, two irrigation wells have gone dry and the remaining two wells are yielding less water. Staff of a provincial geology and mining team are helping the village drill a new deep well. The new well will cost about 200,000 yuan and be completed in a week.

The village has about 800 mu of wheatland with irrigation facilities but only about 700 mu has been irrigated, according to Liang Xilin, a village official.

"Although we've had about 6 mm of precipitation since Feb. 7, the wheat crop will still be affected by drought if we don't irrigate."

Meanwhile, in areas near the Yellow River, farmers have been using water from the river for irrigation.

An 850-meter channel was built in mid-January at Sanyizhai in Lankao County in Henan to divert water from the river to farmlands.

"As more water has been discharged from upstream reservoirs, the water flow at the Sanyizhai section rose to 800 cubic meters per second, compared with 300 cubic meters per second, over the past ten days," said Li Shiyue, an official in charge of the water diversion facility.

The project has irrigated 90 percent of the wheatland within its reach. "The withered wheat has revived," Li said.

As of Thursday, Henan had invested 1.46 billion yuan in drought relief efforts, according to the Henan Water Resources Department.

"The province will use all means possible to reduce drought losses and get a good wheat harvest this year," said Henan Vice Governor Liu Mancang.

The province has set a goal of 30 billion kg of grain this summer. Last summer, its wheat output exceeded that figure for the first time.

Henan got some precipitation this week but still has some 15 million mu of drought-affected wheatland, or one fifth of the total.