China will improve its irrigation efficiency index from current 0.48 to 0.55 in 2020, E Jingping, vice minister of water resources, said Sunday.

Irrigation efficiency index refers to the ratio of the water that could be used by crops against the total irrigation water.

The country will strive to achieve 60 billion cubic meters of annual water-saving capacity in 2020 and water-saving irrigation areas should take up more than 80 percent of the country's total effective irrigation acreage, said E at a forum held in Beijing.

The forum on rural water-saving and grain safety was jointly sponsored by China agricultural water-saving and rural water supply technology association, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research and China Irrigation and Drainage Center.

China has been developing farmland infrastructure and the country's farmland effective irrigation acreage expanded from 240 million mu (16 million hectares) in 1949 to current 877 million mu (128.40 million hectares), said Wang Xiaodong, director of the rural water resources department under the Ministry of Water Resources.

(Xinhua News Agency October 26, 2009)