With Yangzhou’s development as an ecological garden city, a new profession, as a tree-health doctor, has emerged.
Coming to Yangzhou nine years ago, 31-year-old Ma Aicai has worked as a tree-health doctor for the past five years, where his role includes the maintenance and protection of trees.
On the shelves of Ma’s lab stand lots of glass bottles, with each containing a pest. These pests were captured, cultivated and studied by Ma in order to find suitable ways to destroy them. His daily work includes observing and understanding the living habits these pests. For example, he has discovered through long-time observation that in hot seasons, moth-type pests usually eat nothing during the day and begin to do so at night when it is cool. Since early this year, a team of tree-health doctors led by Ma insisted on spraying pesticides every night, effectively containing the moth pests.
Ma often works for more than 12 hours a day during these few years, going to the woods with serious pest situations, and catching the pests and studying them. With the coming of autumn, Ma and his team will start their work to care for trees by destroying pests and pests’ eggs.
