Four generations of breeders of the Yandu District Agricultural Science Research Institute in Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, have been deeply cultivating rice and wheat varieties for 48 years, adhering to the belief that "Chinese grain should use Chinese seeds", two Nanfan bases have been built in Hainan and Yunnan, and 26 excellent varieties of resources of "salt japonica", "salt wheat" and "salt glutinous" have been developed, contributing to the stability of the granary of the big country.
Nowadays, the 16 varieties represented by "Yan Japonica No. 15" and "Yanmai No. 1" have been licensed and transferred to a number of well-known seed enterprises in the province, and the cumulative promotion area of the whole series of products has exceeded 100 million mu, which not only enriches the domestic rice and wheat varieties, but also creates considerable economic benefits for the society.
Breeding: The first "salt" variety resources were born
In the cold season, everything is sealed. In Yancheng, farmers have long been harvesting and preparing for the New Year, and in Sanya, Hainan, thousands of miles away, it is the busiest time for the new season of rice sowing.
On January 21, Ma Jun, deputy director of the Rice Department of the Yandu District Institute of Agricultural Sciences, and two colleagues finished the sowing of 15.5 mu of rice plus generation propagation materials and hurried back to Yancheng from Sanya for the New Year. On the eighth day of the first lunar month, they continued to return to the Nanfang base until the end of rice breeding in mid-April, bringing the new generation of rice seed resources back to Yancheng and carrying out the next round of sowing and breeding work.
"From the beginning of hybridization, a variety of resources must be planted and bred 7 to 8 times, and then stabilized and formed before it can determine whether the quality is excellent." Chen Yuanzhou, deputy secretary of the party branch of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, is the head of the rice research group and just returned to Yancheng from Sanya in early January. "Each generation of seeds needs a growing season, our rice and wheat in the Lixiahe area are ripe once a year, if only in the local planting and breeding, it takes at least 8 years to cultivate a variety." Even if there is one more season of planting and breeding in the Southern Breeding Base, it will take at least 4 years for a variety to enter the mature and stable period. ”
The geographical location of Yancheng is relatively special, and the climatic conditions and ecological environment between the north and the south are obvious, which brings great technical difficulties to the selection and breeding of wheat varieties. "Those who do our business, can't be in a hurry, can't come quickly, from the first day of entering the industry, we must have the patience to sit on the 'cold bench' to prepare." Engaged in the selection and breeding of wheat varieties for 17 years, Li Jinyong, deputy director of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, has a deeper understanding of "sitting on the bench for ten years of cold", and he often advises new colleagues in the research group to break the technical bottleneck, achieve a breakthrough in the independent research and development of new varieties of wheat in coastal areas, and adhere to innovative breeding is the only way out.
In 2004, the Institute of Agricultural Sciences and the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences cooperated to rent 10 acres of experimental fields and build a wheat summer breeding base, but the breeding work has not been a breakthrough. "Whether or not you can successfully breed excellent varieties, experience and technology are not enough, you still need to wait patiently." In 2012, Li Jinyong presided over the work of the wheat research group and decided to adjust the direction of seed selection, introduce a wider range of wheat germplasm resources, and enrich genetic genes. "After waiting for ten years, we have finally succeeded in cultivating the excellent wheat variety 'Salt Wheat No. 1'. In 2015, the test began to bear fruit, and this variety not only has the advantages of the appearance of the Huainan variety, but also has the cold resistance and abundant yield of the Huaibei variety. ”
The "cold bench" was hot and soon ushered in a succession of bumper harvests. In 2020, the new wheat strain "Yanmai 0730" of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences passed the examination and approval of the Jiangsu Provincial Variety Committee, named "Yanmai No. 1", and at the same time passed the national examination, and the domestic wheat varieties have since had Yancheng products. In 2021, a series of excellent varieties such as "Yanmai No. 2", "Yanmai No. 3" and "Yanmai No. 5" have passed the production test and entered the examination and approval procedure, and will soon pass the national and provincial examinations. More new strains were also entered into the second year of regional trials in different groups.
Scientific research: 48 years of relay to adhere to the success rate of 1 in 10,000
"These new strains have performed very well in different generations, this year is the 6th generation, and in the summer, they will enter a mature and stable period when they go to Yunnan to breed." On the morning of January 24, as usual, Li Jinyong's first thing on the job was to go to the breeding test base of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences and carefully check the growth of different wheat materials.
Throughout the year, every staff member of the rice and wheat research group spends most of his time in the fields, half in Yancheng and half in the Nanfan base.
"The scientific research funds of the grass-roots agricultural science institutes are small, the external resources are small, and the conditions in our two Nanfan bases are relatively difficult, and the lives of colleagues there are very simple." The light in Yunnan and Hainan is strong, and after each season of Nanfan, the faces and hands of colleagues in the research group are peeled and blackened. Guo Hong, secretary of the party branch and deputy director of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, said.
Ma Jun, a graduate student at the College of Agriculture at Yangzhou University, came to work at the Yandu District Institute of Agricultural Sciences after graduating in 2016 and became the fourth generation of rice breeders in the institute. "Jiyang District, Sanya City, Hainan Province, is located in the southernmost part of China, only the temperature there in winter is most suitable for rice growth, and many agricultural science institutes across the country have set up test bases in Jiyang, and everyone can say that they are competitors." Ma Jun, who has just returned to Yancheng, has two "color numbers" on his face that are obviously darker than other colleagues, but in his opinion, tanning is nothing, and preventing birds, driving rats, and robbing workers are the biggest problems to worry about growing rice in the Nanfang base in Hainan.
Every year in late November is the season of mango planting in Hainan, the local labor is very scarce, from leveling the land to sowing to harvesting, most of the work Ma Jun and colleagues come by themselves. "The ecological environment of Hainan is quite different from that of Yancheng, there are more birds and rats in the rice fields, and each rice seed is precious, so the protection work must be done in place."
The scientific research strength of the grass-roots agricultural science institute is limited, for them who are short of manpower and financial resources, rice and wheat breeding is like a "big wave of sand", and the failure of variety hybridization is commonplace, and the success rate of cultivating an excellent variety is only one in ten thousand.
"This season we brought more than 5,500 rice materials to Hainan for cultivation, from the first to the sixth generation of seeds, each growing season we need to observe and record the character of each plant in these massive materials, looking for stable and mature excellent varieties." Seed breeding work is monotonous and boring, but Chen Yuanzhou said that from the beginning of the establishment of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, the older generation of breeders have set a firm and clear goal, to cultivate high-quality seeds, so that the "salt" brand of high-quality and high-yield rice and wheat varieties to the whole country.
From 6 scientific researchers 48 years ago, to 15 scientific researchers now, four generations of breeders relay adherence, through years of variety breeding, Yandu District Agricultural Science Institute now independently bred "salt japonica", "salt wheat" and "salt glutinous" series of rice and wheat new varieties 26, won the national plant new variety protection rights 15, has basically built a large number of favorable genes, ecological adaptability and high-quality high-yield genes highly integrated group groups, for the selection of more and better excellent varieties (combinations) to lay a solid foundation.
Promotion: Let more people eat "super rice" produced in Yancheng
"A good seed should not only grow in the test field, but also go to the field and put it in the rice bowl of the common people." The rice and wheat resources cultivated by the Institute of Agricultural Sciences of Yandu District have excellent character, which is fully affirmed by Professor Wei Haiyan of the College of Agriculture of Yangzhou University. She believes that it is the excellent varieties that have been continuously cultivated that have enabled the Yandu District Agricultural Science Institute to have the same excellent ability to transform achievements.
As soon as the new rice and wheat varieties with the name "salt" were listed, they attracted the attention of many agricultural companies, and enterprises inside and outside the province came to cooperate with the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, and the property rights of rice and wheat varieties of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Yandu District were hot.
"Salt Japonica No. 15" is one of the "ace products" of rice varieties in the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, and it has performed well in the experimental stage. "'Yan Japonica No. 15' has not yet been reported to the provincial level for review, and we have already contacted the Agricultural Science Institute of Yandu District and are ready to buy out the property rights of rice seeds." Zhang Zhengping, chairman of Jiangsu Ruihua Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd., said that at that time, there were many companies that were optimistic about the development potential of "Yan Japonica No. 15", and once the rice seeds were identified at the provincial level, Ruihua Company preemptively signed an agreement to buy out the property rights.
"Since 2015, we have extensively deployed demonstrations, and in 2016, the promotion and sales volume exceeded one million catties, and the promotion area has reached about 4.2 million mu in the past six years." Zhang Zhengping happily introduced that after two years of 100 acres of demonstration party production testing and acceptance, in 2021, "Salt Japonica No. 15" was recognized by the state as a "super rice" variety, which brought surprises to Ruihua Company, and at present, "Salt Japonica No. 15" has been the number one rice variety that Ruihua Company focuses on promoting and selling.
Like Ruihua Company, Yangzhou Yufeng Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd. also signed a cooperation agreement early after looking at the seed resources of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences of Yandu District. "In 2018, 'Yanmai No. 1' is still in the research and development stage, we began to cooperate with the Yandu District Agricultural Science Institute, and after passing the provincial recognition in 2020, the two sides formally signed a variety exclusive license agreement, and I am very optimistic that 'Yanmai No. 1' has the potential to become a large variety on the market." Mentioning "Yanmai No. 1", Huang Yufeng, chairman of Yufeng Company, praised its character, "This variety has a high yield, a neat spike layer, a large spike type, a good ripening, a cold resistance, a fall resistance, a disease resistance, etc. Are very good, and after the demonstration and promotion, the market response is very good." ”
"Although the Yandu District Agricultural Science Institute is a grass-roots county-level agricultural science institute, it has been an important backbone of seed industry innovation in the province for many years, and many rice and wheat varieties developed are famous throughout the country." He Jinlong, director of the Jiangsu Provincial Seed Management Station, believes that the Yandu District Institute of Agricultural Sciences has worked hard and made a big fuss about "one seed" for 48 years, and has made contributions to stabilizing China's rice bowl. (Written by |.) Xia Hengjin)