【To the New Era and New World: Fruit and Vegetable Breeders for Youth Employment】
Guangming Daily reporters Yin Zehao, Zhang Wenxiao, and Dongcheng
"Obviously there are imported seeds, so why do Chinese cultivate their own seeds?"
In 2013, after Qian Wei, who had just joined the work, spoke at the International Spinach Conference on behalf of the spinach breeding team of the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, foreign counterparts raised the issue with him.
Qian Wei gave the answer: imported spinach is superior to dark green and round leaves, while the traditional spinach that Chinese loves is tender green and sharp-leafed, and our spinach breeding is to cultivate good varieties that are more in line with Chinese consumption habits.
Qian Wei knows that in addition to allowing consumers to eat more and better quality fruits and vegetables, breeding work is still a major event related to the safety of the national fruit and vegetable industry. Seeds are the "chips" of agriculture, and if you don't take the initiative into your own hands, you will encounter the problem of "stuck neck". In the case of spinach, the mainland imports about 3,600 tons of seeds from abroad each year, worth about $40 million.
Fruit and vegetable breeding is an important task in agricultural scientific research today and in the future. Breeding research is not a day's work, it is impossible to achieve results overnight, but depends on the continuous efforts of generations of agricultural scientists. Nowadays, a large number of young talents have grown into the mainstay of breeding scientific research, and the youth stories of China's fruit and vegetable breeding industry are being written and disseminated by them.
Han Yingyan is conducting research on genes related to the heat tolerance of lettuce
Xie Kaidong is collecting sensory evaluation data for the fruit
Qian Wei investigates the production base of leafy vegetables in Yunnan
1 Cultivate better varieties, and you can't wait for a year
In 2013, Qian Wei, a young man after the 80s, joined the spinach research group led by Xu Zhaosheng, a leafy vegetable breeding expert, and became a scientific researcher. At that time, the spinach breeding research in the mainland was still in the basic stage, spinach hybrid seeds had a serious risk of "stuck neck", and most of the main hybrid spinach planting areas in the country were sown with imported spinach with good disease resistance and high yield characteristics. Cultivating indigenous spinach seeds with more significant and comprehensive advantages became the team's top priority.
Qian Wei was determined to make his own contribution to the field of spinach breeding, but reality quickly poured cold water on this enthusiastic young man. In the fall of 2014, Qian Wei was preparing a research experiment on spinach's disease resistance gene. Before conducting the experiment, the sample of a certain downy mildew physiological subspecies should first be expanded. He brushed the spinach experimental seedlings with germs and waited for the plants to become infected. But an autumn passed, all the experimental seedlings grew up healthily, and the physiological subspecies of this downy mildew disease failed to expand.
"If you fail once, you have to wait another year!" Qian Wei couldn't help but sigh. Under the guidance of his predecessors and the encouragement of his colleagues, he gradually adjusted his mentality and summarized the reasons for his failure. Originally, according to the literature, the breeding conditions could be achieved within 24 hours after moisturization of the germs, and with the experimental equipment and environment at that time, the germs needed a longer moisturizing time to expand smoothly. "It's actually a very small problem that leads to failure. Since then, I've been doing experiments with more thorough design. Qian Wei said.
Year after year, sowing and harvesting, Qian Wei gradually found that his life had become inseparable from spinach. Spinach, like his friend for many years, his job is to help this "old friend" become healthy and strong.
In 2020, Qian Wei, who had just taken over the baton of spinach research group leader from researcher Xu Zhaosheng, encountered a problem. At the beginning of the year, due to the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, teachers and students who returned home for the New Year could not return to school in time. In the past, experimental seedlings sown years ago were cared for by several teachers during the Spring Festival. That year, the responsibility of watching and protecting seedlings during the Spring Festival all fell on Qian Wei's shoulders. In order to ensure the survival of the experimental seedlings and not delay the experimental process, on the day of Chinese New Year's Eve, Qian Wei was alone in the greenhouse watering and pollinating, and returned home late to reunite with his family.
During that time, he had to go to the field every day or two. "If the experimental seedling dies, wait another year!" What is it when you are tired? ”
Nowadays, with the application of molecular breeding technology, the breeding cycle of the spinach breeding team of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has been shortened by 2 to 3 years compared with the original, which has greatly improved the breeding efficiency. At present, more than 40 new varieties of the "vegetable spinach" series have been cultivated, and some hybrid spinach production areas have begun to sow the domestic seeds they cultivate.
"Our seed quality has become closer and closer to foreign high-quality seeds, although the market share of imported seeds is still high, but our seed source reserves are enough to ensure the safety of the mainland spinach industry." Qian Wei said that in the next step, he will lead the team to cultivate better spinach seeds and let domestic spinach go to the table of thousands of households.
2 From the laboratory to the field, scientific research and labor are suitable for both
After the Emperor Jia Shu, the orange is obeyed. More than 2,000 years ago, Qu Yuan described the orange forest, observed the orange trees, praised the orange fruit, and wrote the famous "Ode to Orange". In the land of China, the tradition of growing and eating citrus has a long history.
In 2015, after graduating from Huazhong Agricultural University, Xie Kaidong joined the team of citrus breeding expert Guo Wenwu to engage in triploid seedless breeding research. In the school's breeding garden, Xie Kaidong often leads students to check the growth of saplings and assess the quality of the fruit. Watering, grafting, pruning, these farm tasks he also does with the students, hands-on.
"To do this business, you have to work not only in the lab, but also in the field." The post-80s youth has been engaged in citrus breeding research for more than ten years, and recalls that at the beginning, he thought that the sense of labor made him choose this lifelong career.
In the process of developing new varieties of triploid, embryo rescue is an important process in the laboratory. Only when the rescue is successful, the seeds can germinate, and they can go from the laboratory to the field and carry out grafting planting. This is a "physical work", the workload is very large, after years of hands-on practice, Xie Kaidong saw the improvement space of this process.
According to past experience, the window time for embryo rescue is from the 70th to the 100th day after pollination, which is up to one month. When to rescue the best depends on the "feelings" of the researchers. As a result, the seed germination rate has been hovering around 20%.
"Find the right time, maybe you can improve the germination rate!" After 3 years of attempts, Xie Kaidong accurately estimated the window time for embryo rescue to about day 85, and he also optimized the incision method of the seeds to make the embryos more fully exposed to the nutrients of the medium. After his improvement, the germination rate of embryo rescue seeds increased to more than 40%.
Nowadays, Xie Kaidong has made embryo rescue "physical work" into "artistic work". For more than a decade, Xie Kaidong has accumulated more than 3,000 single plants into the field, of which more than 1,000 have flowered and borne fruit. "Grass and trees have feelings. Putting your heart into it, rescuing a small embryo, and watching it grow and bear fruit is the best reward for us. He said.
On the mainland, about 40% of native citrus varieties are seed, which has led to a certain extent that the local citrus industry and market have shrunk year by year. In order to revitalize the local citrus industry and enhance the independent and controllable ability of mainland citrus seed sources, Xie Kaidong's team has been committed to the research of seedless and purification and rejuvenation of local citrus varieties for many years to improve the quality of local citrus.
"Cultivating a variety that growers recognize and consumers love is far more rewarding than publishing a paper." Seeing that the team's results are increasingly being used in the practice of citrus cultivation and rural revitalization across the country, Xie Kaidong believes that in the future, the seedless high-quality new varieties of citrus independently cultivated by the mainland will be planted all over the mountains of the citrus production area.
In 320, rare varieties flew into the homes of ordinary people
Lettuce, everyone is no stranger. But in Beijing in the 1990s, it only appeared on the tables of high-end restaurants. What made the rare vegetables of that year home-cooked? Professor Han Yingyan of Beijing Agricultural College has been conducting more than 20 years of research on lettuce cultivation.
In 2001, after graduating from university, Han Yingyan joined the lettuce research and development team of Fan Shuangxi, an expert in lettuce breeding. Fan Shuangxi is the first breeder in China to carry out lettuce research, planting the seeds of more than 100 lettuce varieties collected from all over the world in the field to find suitable lettuce varieties for planting in Beijing.
"I was deeply moved by Mr. Fei's unwavering determination to study lettuce and prompted me to join his team. Since then, I have formed an indissoluble relationship with lettuce. Han Yingyan said.
Originally planted along the Mediterranean coast, lettuce prefers shade and is easy to smoke when the temperature exceeds 30 degrees Celsius, so it is difficult to grow in the summer in Beijing. "Finding heat-resistant lettuce varieties is the team's research focus." Han Yingyan introduced.
It is also this characteristic of lettuce that makes her research team suffer a lot. In order to make the dishes heat resistant, in the summer, team members braved the heat of more than 40 degrees Celsius to work in greenhouses. "The teachers and classmates of the research team were already sweating when they went in and worked for an hour." Han Yingyan laughed and said, "We are rushing to steam the free 'sauna'. ”
The entire selection process lasted five or six years, and finally 8 relatively adaptable lettuce varieties were selected to be planted in Beijing. In order to meet the needs of Beijing citizens for lettuce, we can only select from the imported varieties while cultivating new local varieties. But Han Yingyan's team is not satisfied, "After all, these varieties are selected and bred by foreign countries according to their own climatic conditions and growth environment, and they cannot adapt well to the growing environment in Beijing." ”
After another seven years, in 2012, the team finally cultivated 4 varieties of lettuce suitable for planting in Beijing: "Beisheng No. 1", "Beisheng No. 2", "Beisansheng No. 1" and "Beisansheng No. 2". "These 4 varieties solve the technical problem that there are no heat-resistant lettuce varieties in the mainland, and the heat resistance performance is even better than the previous 8 varieties." Han Yingyan proudly said that today, lettuce has become one of the largest leafy vegetables sown in Beijing, and has entered the daily recipes of citizens.
"Wherever I go now, the first thing I do when I put down my backpack is to go to the local market to research lettuce." After 20 years of persistent research, graduate dishes have long become Han Yingyan's living habits.
Guangming Daily ( 2022-09-27 12 edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily