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After 20 months of industrialized farming, 20,000 freshwater mussels were successfully harvested at Bairuila, the only factory-type freshwater pearl breeding base in China, on March 27.

The company is located in Yaojiang town in Zhuji, a county-level city in Shaoxing in East China's Zhejiang province.

"The largest diameter of these pearls reached 17.1 millimeters, and the average diameter was 12.2 mm," said Fu Biacheng, the head of the company.

"More importantly, the roundness of these pearls reached more than 70 percent, the proportion of jewel-grade pearls was about 40 percent, with estimated sales value of more than 20 million yuan ($2.82 million)."

Fu also said that the factory's intelligent breeding technology is now mature and can be promoted to the outside world.

The biggest difference between industrialized farming and traditional farming is environmental protection and resource utilization. Industrialized farming not only completely solves the problem of water pollution in traditional farming and achieves zero sewage discharge, but it also increases the density of freshwater mussels more than 50 times that of traditional farming, Fu said.

Bairuila started its freshwater pearl ecological industrialized breeding project in 2005, and carried out industry-university cooperation with related domestic research institutions. The company has obtained three national invention patents and nine utility model patents.