Breeding： Realizing Leap-forward Development, Making a Good Fight for Seed Industry.
A new round of deep integration of biotechnology and information technology has driven the rapid transformation and iteration of modern biological breeding technology and become a new engine to promote the development of modern agricultural industry. Biological breeding has entered a new era of big data, big platform and great discovery.
Wan Jianmin
Member Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Academician of China Academy of Engineering, Vice President of China Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
A seed can change a world. The development of seed industry is directly related to the national food security and the "rice bag" and "vegetable basket" of the people.
What measures will China take to turn over the seed industry during the 14 th Five-Year Plan period?
On March 5, at the "Ministerial Passage" of the Fourth Session of the 13th National People’s Congress, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Tang Renjian said: "We are working with relevant departments to study and formulate an action plan to turn the seed industry around. Strive to achieve a major breakthrough in seed industry in about 10 years. First, in terms of germplasm resources, the livestock and poultry germplasm resource bank is currently being established; The marine fishery germplasm resource bank has been built; The new crop germplasm resource bank will be built in September this year, and the preservation capacity will reach 1.5 million copies after completion, ranking first in the world. Second, in tackling key core technologies, we will make breakthroughs in original technology and chassis technology as much as possible, and strive to put these technologies in our hands. Third, it is necessary to cultivate a number of seed enterprises that integrate breeding, reproduction and promotion, and establish and improve a commercial breeding system. The fourth is to do a good job in the construction of Hainan Nanfan base and seed bases in Gansu, Sichuan and other countries. The fifth is to manage the seed market and protect intellectual property rights, especially to crack down on deck infringement. "
Biological breeding becomes a new engine to promote the development of modern agriculture
"China is the second largest seed market in the world and a big seed country, but it is not yet a strong seed country. The key to realizing the leap-forward development of modern seed industry and making a good turnaround of seed industry is to vigorously promote the innovation of breeding technology." Zhang Wen, the second inspector of the Science and Education Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, pointed out.
"The development of international seed industry is generally divided into four stages, namely the era of domestication and selection 1.0, the era of conventional breeding 2.0, the era of molecular marker-assisted selection breeding 3.0 and the era of intelligent breeding 4.0. In some developed countries, seed industry has entered the breeding 4.0 era of’ biotechnology+artificial intelligence+big data information technology’. China is still between the 2.0 era and the 3.0 era, which is mainly based on hybrid breeding and molecular technology-assisted breeding. " Wan Jianmin, member of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, academician of China Academy of Engineering and vice president of China Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told the Science and Technology Daily reporter.
In recent years, developed countries have continuously deepened the layout of basic disciplines and seized the commanding heights of future agricultural industry development. Significant progress has been made in the research of major gene mining and functional analysis, and the molecular mechanism of the formation of important traits; Drive the deep integration of agricultural biotechnology and artificial intelligence; Promote the upgrading, superposition and integration of technologies such as gene editing and synthetic biology, and promote the revolution of precision, intelligence and factory seed industry.
"Although China is rich in germplasm resources, due to the long-term weak basic agricultural research, there are insufficient original new germplasm, new materials and new technologies, and the intellectual property rights of some core provenances of animals and plants are controlled by foreign seed giants." Gao Wangsheng, a professor at China Agricultural University and president of the National Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology Strategy, told the Science and Technology Daily reporter.
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee put forward that self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology should be the strategic support for national development, and biological breeding should be listed as one of the eight frontier areas to strengthen the key development of national strategic forces. The innovation and application of biological breeding have been placed in a more prominent and important position, and the development of biological breeding has entered a new stage.
"A new round of deep integration of biotechnology and information technology has driven the rapid transformation and iteration of modern biological breeding technology and become a new engine to promote the development of modern agricultural industry. Biological breeding has entered a new era of big data, big platform and great discovery. " Wan Jianmin said.
Using new technology to realize overtaking in seed industry curve
"If the seed industry is the chip of agriculture, then the germplasm resources are the chip of the chip. Without germplasm resources, agricultural breeding innovation will become passive water. China has 520,000 germplasm resources and is the second largest germplasm resource country in the world. However, less than 10% of the germplasm resources have been deeply identified and evaluated, and there is a certain gap between the development and utilization of germplasm resources and developed countries. " Yang Hua, deputy to the National People’s Congress, deputy secretary of the party group and general manager of Sinochem Group, said that China has a profound lesson of poor protection of germplasm resources. China is the country of origin of soybean, which has special excellent soybean germplasm resources. However, foreign companies have applied for 64 international patents using a wild soybean material from China as their parents, which may lead to the infringement of intellectual property rights by Chinese breeding enterprises using their own soybean plants. Insufficient protection, development and utilization of germplasm resources have caused the problem of "sticking the neck" of some crop species in China.
Wan Jianmin revealed that during the "Tenth Five-Year Plan" period, China will continue to promote the third national survey and collection of agricultural germplasm resources, focusing on building a platform for Qualcomm quantitative and large-scale phenotypic and genotypic identification, exploring germplasm materials with excellent genetic resources, and directionally improving and creating new germplasm with high yield, high quality, stress resistance and efficient utilization of nutrients.
According to Zhu Jiankang, director of Shanghai Plant Stress Biology Research Center of China Academy of Sciences and academician of American Academy of Sciences, if biological breeding technology is used well, China will be able to solve the bottleneck problem of seed industry faced by agriculture.
Zhu Jiankang thinks that it will take many years to catch up with the technical level of foreign seed industry if we rely on traditional breeding, but new breeding technology can make us do it faster. "It is entirely possible that the new technology will enable us to truly overtake the seed industry in corners and make our seeds more competitive." He said.
"At present, the world seed industry is welcoming the modern biological breeding scientific and technological revolution marked by the integrated development of gene editing, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and other technologies. We need to seize the opportunity, accelerate innovation, and turn the seed industry over, so as to realize the leap-forward development of the seed industry." Zhang Taolin, Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said.
Gao Wangsheng suggested that during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period, China should organize and implement the national seed science and technology innovation project, strengthen the original breakthroughs in basic frontier technologies such as animal stem cells and synthetic biology, and cultivate a number of core germplasm resources with independent intellectual property rights and major strategic new varieties; Accelerate the industrialization application process of biological breeding; Implement the modern seed enterprise reengineering project, and make up your mind to cultivate leading seed enterprises with strong international competitiveness.
"We should build a technological innovation center with systematic layout in innovation chain, build more national key laboratories such as crop genetic resources, cultivate innovative teams integrating the upper, middle and lower reaches, foster internationally competitive seed enterprises, and grasp the initiative in the development of biological seed industry." Wan Jianmin said.
Strengthening original innovation and promoting seed industry’s scientific and technological self-reliance
How to strengthen the original innovation of seed science and technology and realize the self-reliance of seed science and technology?
"This year’s No.1 Document of the Central Committee has made a top-level design and system deployment for the turnaround of the seed industry, involving all aspects of the entire seed industry chain such as germplasm resources protection, breeding research, and seed market management. Generally speaking, we must adhere to the bottom line thinking and problem-oriented, focus on the national food security and the "three guarantees" requirements of ensuring quantity, diversity and quality of important agricultural and sideline products, follow the law of seed industry innovation and development, and break the card, make up the shortcomings and strengthen the advantages. To sum up, it is necessary to speed up the construction of seed industry innovation system, including germplasm resources protection and utilization system, industrial system and governance system, and comprehensively improve the four capabilities of independent innovation, enterprise competition, seed supply guarantee and governance according to law. " Zhang Taolin said.
"In the future, it is necessary to speed up the establishment of a modern, automated and intelligent national germplasm bank for new works, focusing on cultivating major new varieties such as high-quality green super rice, high-quality functional rice, high-quality water-saving wheat, scab-resistant wheat, drought-tolerant corn, insect-resistant and herbicide-resistant corn, high-quality protein corn, high-yield and high-protein soybeans, and herbicide-resistant soybeans." Wan Jianmin said that it is necessary to continue to promote the joint research and genetic improvement plan for improved varieties, tap truly useful genes, create breakthrough germplasm, and realize the self-reliance and self-reliance of China’s seed industry science and technology. Such as rice and wheat, we should speed up the breeding of high-quality special varieties to maintain competitiveness, and soybean should speed up the breeding of high-yield high-oil high-protein varieties.
"The future development direction of agriculture is: high and stable yield, high quality nutrition, high efficiency and safety, and agricultural industrialization." Li Jiayang, a deputy to the National People’s Congress, an academician of China Academy of Sciences and a researcher at the Institute of Genetics and Development of China Academy of Sciences, said that China’s agricultural modernization has reached a new stage of accelerating the transformation of development mode, and it must rely more on science and technology to achieve innovation drive, and continuously provide a strong driving force for agricultural development transformation and upgrading, quality improvement and efficiency improvement.
Li Jiayang said that taking rice as an example, there will be three aspects of work in the future.
First, we should strengthen the cultivation of new varieties. China has a vast territory, many rice planting areas and many main varieties, and the varieties in many areas have not been upgraded, so it is necessary to continue to create more new rice varieties suitable for different ecological areas.
Second, it is necessary to strengthen the promotion of new varieties, so that more farmers can plant new varieties and benefit from them, and ensure national food security.
Third, it is necessary to continue to strengthen the research on functional genes in rice, especially in the field of important agronomic traits (resistance to high and low temperature, insect resistance, resistance to false smut, etc.) where key genes have not been found.
Li Xinhai, director of the Institute of Biotechnology of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and chief scientist of the national corn industrial technology system, pointed out that corn is the largest crop in China, an important grain feed and industrial raw material in China, and an important basis for national food security and effective supply of agricultural products.
"With the improvement of people’s living standards, the consumption of corn has increased year by year. During the 14 th Five-Year Plan period, corn should break through the bottleneck of germplasm and develop in the direction of high quality, greening and mechanization. It should focus on tropical germplasm, drive the rapid improvement of the original core scientific research strength of biological breeding in China through technological integration, master the discourse power of corn seed industry, and ensure national food security. " Li Xinhai said.
Source: Science and Technology Daily
Reporting/feedback