GUANGZHOU -- Chinese Vice-Premier Liu Guozhong has called for accelerating sci-tech innovation in the fields of agriculture and healthcare, and enhancing the independent innovation capabilities of medicines and medical devices.

Liu, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks during a research trip to South China's Guangdong province from Thursday to Saturday.

He emphasized that it is essential to focus on the urgent needs of the industry and target key areas such as seed industry, agricultural machinery, forage, and planting and breeding technologies.

Liu called for speeding up the transformation of agricultural sci-tech achievements, actively supporting the intelligent agriculture, vigorously developing the deep processing of agricultural products, and strengthening the employment guidance and skills training to help the people who have been lifted out of poverty and rural workers maintain stable employment.

Efforts should also be made to encourage enterprises, hospitals and research institutions to focus on the cutting-edge and "bottleneck" technologies of medicines and medical devices and strengthen the in-depth integration of industry, academia, research and application, Liu said.