People’s Daily, Jiang Jianke
Looking just like regular corn, a new corn variety containing high folic acids will hit Chinese supermarkets by the end of September.
The incoming product, which contains 200 to 240 micrograms of folic acids per 100 grams, could prevent folic acid deficiency in the human body, according to Zhang Chunyi, deputy director of the Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Seedsare key for improving crop production and productivity. One seed can change the world, and one crop variety could benefit a country.
Thanks to the research efforts of generations of Chinese scientists, China has changed from a country having a critically low food supply to an adequate one.
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese scientists have successfully cultivated more than 50,000 approved and registered crop varieties, making great contributions to the national goal of “having control over our own food supply”.
The country has made extraordinary achievements in scientific research on seeds over the past 70 years.
Chinese scientists, represented by Yuan Longping and Li Zhensheng, two national top science and technology award winners, have been granted a large number of patents in breeding theories, methods and materials, providing great support for improving grain yield and safety.
Li Denghai, known as “the father of China’s compact hybrid corn”, has selected and bred more than 80 high-yield new corn varieties, which broke the summer corn high yield record six times.
Zhao Hongzhang, a scientist in the field of wheat breeding in China, has successively cultivated four batches of fine wheat varieties represented by “Bima No. 1”, “Fengchan No. 3”, “Aifeng No. 3” and “Xinong 881”, with an accumulative planting area of 950 million mu, or 63 million hectares.
Over the past 70 years, China’s overall grain production capacity has been improving steadily. It is the seeds independently developed by China that raised the Chinese people.
Over the same period, China has established efficient breeding systems for super rice, dwarf-male-sterile wheat and hybrid corn. At present, China’s rice, wheat and other crop varieties are all independent, enabling the country to plant crops with its own seeds.
