Little cauliflower Big stage of science and technology

In the Wuqing Innovation Base of Tianjin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the reporter walked into the cauliflower breeding demonstration area of more than 30 acres of land, and the patches of green cauliflower seedlings were lush, and here was the cauliflower breeding demonstration area of Sun Deling' team, a researcher of the Tianjin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, a candidate for the National Million Talents Project, and a cauliflower post expert in the national bulk vegetable industry technology system.

Look closely, the cauliflower seedlings in different varieties are not only different in color and shade, but also have different shapes of leaves, some are jagged in shape, and some are lobed. "Here are the breeding experiments of cauliflower and the breeding demonstration of new varieties all year round, and 26 varieties of cauliflower with independent intellectual property rights are from four series of 'Xia Xue', 'Fenghua', 'Jinxue' and 'Jinpin'." Sun Deling, who has been working in the fields for a long time and with a dark face, came from the ground and briefed reporters: "Six of these varieties have already obtained the right to plant new varieties, and they are also the first batch of cauliflower varieties listed in China for the protection of the "International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants" (also known as the UPOV Convention).

"Cauliflower is commonly known as cauliflower, according to the color of the cabbage flower, cauliflower, cauliflower is what we call broccoli, as well as purple, orange cauliflower and so on. Among them, the cabbage flower is divided into compact cauliflower and loose cauliflower, referred to as pine cauliflower. Talking about the development of China's cauliflower seed industry, Sun Deling sighed that in the 1970s, China's cauliflower varieties were mixed, seriously degraded, the yield was low, the yield was only about 1,000 kilograms per mu, and the hybrids all relied on imports, such as "French cauliflower", "Dutch snowball", "Swiss snowball" and so on are all foreign names, and even cauliflower is called "artichoke", and every year the country has to spend a lot of foreign exchange to buy.

All this made Sun Deling see in his eyes and anxious in his heart. In order to change the backward situation of Cauliflower production in China, for more than 30 years, the team has adhered to independent innovation, overcome a number of breeding technical problems, selected and bred a series of cauliflower hybrid varieties with independent intellectual property rights, promoted the localization of hybrid varieties, and made outstanding contributions to the development of China's cauliflower industry.

"Breeding goals are constantly changing, with the improvement of people's living standards, the market demand is more diversified, and the upgrading of varieties must also keep pace with the times." Recalling decades of breeding experience, Sun Deling admitted that in recent years, pine cauliflower is very popular in the cabbage flower market. In the past ten years, he led the team to break through the bottleneck problem of lack of pine cauliflower germplasm resources, and selected and bred the new variety of high-quality, multi-resistant and adaptable strong pine cauliflower "Jinsong" series, which greatly changed the situation that pine cauliflower varieties in mainland China rely on Taiwan to introduce, and led the replacement of cauliflower varieties and industrial upgrading in China. In addition, the bred broccoli commercial species took the lead in realizing the sterility of all varieties, which promoted the major transformation of Cauliflower breeding in China from self-incompatibility to male sterile lines.

Up to now, the new varieties of cauliflower selected by the team have been promoted to more than 20 provinces and cities across the country, with a cumulative promotion area of more than 8.5 million mu, new economic benefits of 5.95 billion yuan, and the market share ranks first in China, which improves the shortage of excellent hybrid varieties of cauliflower in China, of which the newly bred "Jinpin 70" and "Jinpin 66" cauliflower varieties rank first in the country for 3 consecutive years, and the planting area accounts for more than 20% of similar varieties. In addition, the new varieties bred have gone abroad, and the fine varieties have been exported to Pakistan, India and other countries along the "Belt and Road".

Technological innovation is the premise and foundation of variety innovation. Over the years, Sun Deling led the breeding team to adhere to independent innovation, for the first time at home and abroad to develop the "cauliflower breeding expert system", the application of information technology to cauliflower breeding practice, the system prediction accuracy of 80%, filling the gap in the field of cauliflower at home and abroad. In order to improve the level of disease resistance breeding of cauliflower in China, it has taken the lead in establishing the identification method and standard of artificial inoculation resistance of cauliflower TuMV, black rot, root swelling disease and black spot disease at the seedling stage, and systematically applied to the practice of disease resistance breeding, creating a number of excellent disease resistance resources, laying a foundation for the breeding of new varieties of cauliflower disease resistance, and its scientific research achievements such as "creation of excellent germplasm of cauliflower and breeding of new varieties" and "scientific and technological innovation project of vegetable fine seeds" have won the first prize of Tianjin Science and Technology Progress Award for many times.

In order to seize the commanding heights in the field of cauliflower genome research internationally, in 2017, the team launched the whole genome sequencing of cauliflower, and completed the whole genome sequencing of cauliflower for the first time in the world in 2019, and the relevant papers were published in the famous journal of horticulture "HorticultureRe? search", marking that the research level of cauliflower genomics in China has entered the forefront of the world.

The disclosure of the whole gene sequence of cauliflower greatly improves the efficiency of excellent gene mining and gene cloning and localization of cauliflower, and at the same time lays a solid foundation for the targeted molecular breeding, polymerization breeding and efficient and accurate cultivation of new varieties of cauliflower. In 2020, the team led by Sun Deling launched a large-scale resequencing analysis of cauliflower, completed the sequencing data analysis of 825 kale materials including 709 cauliflower, and carried out GWAS analysis of important agronomic traits including yield, quality, disease resistance and stress resistance, laying a solid foundation for elucidating the evolution of cauliflower, domestication process, mining important functional genes, and further carrying out molecular design and breeding of cauliflower.

Looking forward to the prospects of cauliflower breeding, Sun Deling said that in the future, it is necessary to strengthen basic research, establish an efficient biological breeding technology system for cauliflower, and achieve accurate molecular design breeding; Strengthen the innovation of broccoli breeding, and continuously achieve breakthroughs in broccoli varieties. While meeting the needs of China's cauliflower industry, we will strengthen the breeding of new varieties of cauliflower for export, so that domestic varieties can stand on the international stage and improve the international market competitiveness and influence of the cauliflower seed industry.

Farmer Daily, China Rural Network reporter Jin Huiying, Lin Dandan