Small varieties blowout, large varieties rare, high variety idle rate -
How to fight the battle of turning over the seed industry
【Produced by Deep Hitomi Studio】
Written by: Tang Fang and Ma Aiping, reporters of this newspaper
Planner: Chen Yu, Li Kun
Since the implementation of the Seed Law, the enthusiasm of local breeding has been high, and the number of approved varieties has surged, but the homogenization of seeds is serious, there are few breakthrough varieties, and major breeding results are rare. To solve the problem of "small, weak and scattered" and "chaotic" varieties of seed enterprises, it is urgent to change the breeding scientific research evaluation system, strengthen cooperation between science and technology enterprises, and strengthen biological breeding research and development.
Walked into Jiangsu Xuzhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences to inspect the national sweet potato germplasm resources test tube nursery bank; Go to Jiangsu Lixiahe Regional Agricultural Science Research Institute to check the rice and wheat breeding situation... Recently, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress went to Jiangsu to carry out law enforcement inspections on the implementation of the Seed Law.
This is the first comprehensive law enforcement inspection of the Seed Law since the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress amended the Seed Law in December 2021.
The reporter of Science and Technology Daily followed the investigation of the law enforcement inspection team and found that since the implementation of the seed law, the popularity of local breeding has been high, and the number of approved varieties has surged, but the homogenization is serious, there are few breakthrough varieties, and major breeding results are rare. To solve the problem of "small, weak and scattered" and "chaotic" varieties of seed enterprises, it is urgent to change the breeding scientific research evaluation system, strengthen cooperation between science and technology enterprises, and strengthen biological breeding research and development.
New varieties blowout
Wang Cailin, former director of the Institute of Grain Crops of the Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, is known as the "father of Nanjing". At the green organic rice demonstration base of a family farm in Huai'an, Jiangsu Province, the reporter met the "Nanjing 9108" bred by Wang Cailin.
Recalling the ups and downs of the breeding history of "Nanjing 9108", Wang Cailin concluded that germplasm resources are the key.
In the early 90s of last century, Wang Cailin, who was studying abroad, ate delicious local rice and decided to breed in the direction of "delicious".
From 1991 to 1999, he collected more than 3000,<> rice germplasm resources from all over the world, studied all traits related to taste, and finally found that rice was better and had a lower amylose content.
After studying all the breeding resources again, Wang Cailin found the gene that controls the content of amylose in the variety "Kanto 194" imported from Japan. After tracing the origin, he found that japonica rice originated in the Taihu Lake area of China. "It turns out that germplasm resources are in China." He suddenly realized and turned his attention to Jiangsu to look for excellent genes.
After a large number of tests, Wang Cailin found low amylose content genes, grain type genes and disease resistance genes.
In 2008, China's first pioneering excellent flavor japonica rice variety "Nanjing 46" passed the examination, and then won the title of "Gold Award Rice" in the national rice selection for many times.
"Nanjing 46" is high-quality and delicious, but the growth period is longer, 165 days. Wang Cailin did not stop, further closely followed the production demand, in 2011 launched "Nanjing 155" with a growth period of 160 days to 5055 days, and in 2013 launched "Nanjing 150" with a growth period of 155 days to 9108 days, quickly occupying the rice planting market in Jiangsu.
Today, "Nanjing 9108" has promoted planting area of more than 8 million mu for 500 consecutive years, reaching 2022 million mu in 700, which is the first rice variety in Jiangsu Province and the third in the national conventional rice varieties. So far, there are 20 varieties of "Nanjing" series of excellent flavored japonica rice, and the cumulative promotion has exceeded 1 million mu. The gene with low amylose content found by Wang Cailin directly led the direction of japonica rice breeding in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. As of 2022, nearly 80 new varieties have been bred with this gene, of which 46 and 32 varieties have been approved by Jiangsu Province and Shanghai respectively.
Variety approval is an important link in the variety management chain, which is related to the overall revitalization of the seed industry.
According to the latest announcement issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in 2022, there are 2022,1384 varieties under national review in 438, including 827 rice varieties, 49 corn varieties, 70 cotton varieties and <> soybean varieties.
On May 5 this year, the Fifth National Crop Variety Validation Committee reported that in the past five years, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has launched a large number of new varieties with high and stable yield, green and high-quality, and special special use, and approved 24,5 high-quality green varieties, accounting for 2267/1.
At a time when the revitalization of the seed industry is advancing in an all-round way, the seed law, which has been revised four times, has become an important legal guarantee to promote the innovative development of the seed industry.
Qian Qian, a rice germplasm resource scientist and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told reporters that there are three main types of intellectual property rights involved in seed research and development: new plant variety rights, patents and trade secrets. Plant variety rights are the most direct and core intellectual property rights related to seed innovation. The revised Seed Law makes three adjustments to the protection of new plant varieties: expanding the scope of protection of variety rights and protecting links; Provide for a system of substantive derived varieties; The maximum multiple of punitive damages and the maximum amount of statutory damages have been increased.
"After the implementation of the revised Seed Law, China's new plant variety protection system can basically meet the current protection needs of seed innovation." Sun Qixin, a wheat geneticist and president of China Agricultural University, concluded.
Large varieties are rare
Although the variety has increased exponentially, Qian Qian bluntly said that there are not many large varieties that really have breakthroughs.
This is also the common feeling of the members of the law enforcement inspection team during the inspection.
"Although thousands of varieties are approved every year, most of them are actually small varieties that are closely related." Chen Fan, executive director of the Yazhou Bay Seed Laboratory in Hainan Province, said that this is completely different from the "big variety" route taken abroad, "Take the 'foreign seed' represented by 'Xianyu 335' as an example, it once dominated China's corn seed market, and one variety can beat most similar varieties in China." ”
Why are large varieties rare? Several interviewees mentioned the pressure of assessment and evaluation.
"It takes as little as 10 years to breed a truly new variety, but many breeding programs require a new variety to be delivered in three years." Wang Cailin said.
A number of breeding experts told reporters that this is because many agricultural institutions mainly rely on varieties to achieve title promotion, scientific research funding applications and project completion.
"The annual performance of scientific researchers lies in the variety produced, scientific research units must summarize and report the number of new varieties every year, and seed companies are constantly looking for scientific research units to ask for new varieties." Chen Fan said that under these pressures, researchers can only adopt a "makeover" approach, it is difficult to persistently "intensive farming", and the "new varieties" bred are mostly minor repairs and minor changes to the main cultivars, "hybridization to hybridization, or the same type of varieties, lack of original innovation." ”
During the law enforcement inspection, it was also mentioned that one of the main reasons for the failure to select and breed large varieties was the lack of financial investment.
Yuan Jianhua, a researcher at the Institute of Grain Crops of Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, has been deeply engaged in the field of waxy corn breeding for nearly 40 years, and the corn varieties Su Yu 20 and Su Yu 29 have helped Jiangsu corn production to a higher level.
"But it is very difficult for breeding to break through further." Yuan Jianhua took the shelf life of waxy corn as an example to say that fresh corn has now entered the era of large market circulation, and in order to maintain good quality in the logistics process, distributors have proposed an indicator of "long shelf life" for corn varieties. However, at present, the main evaluation of the long shelf life in the market is based on the fact that the buds of corn are still green after two days of harvest. In fact, it is not enough to look at the appearance of the ear, but also to evaluate from the aspects of taste quality and nutrients, which requires in-depth research from the physiological and genetic perspectives, and relevant research funds are required.
Yuan Jianhua said frankly that although China has the richest source of waxy corn in the world, there is basically not much research on waxy corn germplasm resources. Lack of financial support makes it difficult for breeding experts to revitalize these germplasm resources, and there is a low level of duplication in breeding.
"It is necessary to study germplasm resources a little deeper, clarify what excellent genes these germplasm resources have, and grasp their genetic rules, physiological and biochemical performance, and their impact on yield and quality, which is conducive to the selection and breeding of breakthrough varieties." Yuan Jianhua said.
Public information shows that internationally, the average investment in breeding a large variety is 1 million US dollars.
Wang Cailin said that unlike foreign commercial breeding models, China is mainly based on public welfare breeding.
He took "Nanjing 9108" as an example to calculate an account, and invested a total of about 2000 million yuan in the cultivation of this variety, covering scientific research funds, scientific research platforms, instruments and equipment, base construction and personnel salaries.
"In addition, multinational companies have adopted a digital, streamlined breeding model, and some even mobilize tens of thousands of researchers to make a variety at the same time." Chen Fan said that most domestic breeding institutions still adopt a team, a few acres of land type small workshop breeding model, it is not easy to breed a variety "big".
Small varieties blowouts and large varieties rarely have also brought embarrassment: some seeds abroad are sold for grain, and domestic seeds are sold in large quantities.
For example, Yuan Jianhua said that in the past, the germination rate of corn seeds in China was not high, and the seeds were sold in bags, and farmers had to sprinkle several seeds in each hole for fear that they would not emerge. Foreign companies have done in-depth research on the characteristics of corn suitable for mechanized sowing and have been strictly selected and graded, and the seed quality is high. With the high germination rate, single seeds are sown, and the amount of seeds per mu is less than half of the domestic varieties.
The variety has a high idle rate
While the number of newly approved varieties is rising rapidly every year, another phenomenon that cannot be ignored is that the idle rate of varieties is not low.
In Chen Fan's view, the value of varieties lies in planting in the ground to produce food, "but now the vast majority of varieties are just a name, and the integration of 'breeding, breeding and promotion' has become a problem, and no one cares whether new varieties can really be popularized and applied."
Taking rice as an example, Chen Fan once made statistics that there are more than 1000,4 rice varieties in China's market, while there are only more than 6 major rice varieties planted in the country's 200 million mu of rice fields. In other words, nearly eighty percent of rice varieties are idle.
At the symposium on the implementation of the seed law, experts also mentioned that many domestic cultivated crop varieties have not been actually planted.
In the industry's view, the high idle rate of varieties is also related to the "small, weak, many, scattered" seed enterprises in China.
According to the "2020 China Agricultural Species Industry Development Report", by the end of 2019, among the nearly 6400,100 seed enterprises in China, less than 82 had real independent research and development capabilities, of which <>% were sales enterprises.
"Seed enterprises are small and scattered, often do not have the ability to 'breed and push', 'can't catch' new varieties, can only produce disorderly competition, and it is difficult to make 'big' new varieties." Chen Fan believes that the threshold for starting a seed company is too low, "you can open a company with three varieties", and there are more and more small seed companies, and even a dozen seed companies appear in one place.
"The real entry of domestic seed enterprises into market-oriented competition was marked by the implementation of the Seed Law in 2000." Jiang Hongyun, general manager of Jiangsu Zhongjiang Seed Industry Co., Ltd., told reporters that after nearly a hundred years of development, foreign seed enterprises have formed a perfect commercial breeding system due to the support of high profits. China's seed industry enterprises have a short market-oriented cultivation time, coupled with a large number and thin profits, and low-price operation is the main means of industry competition. "There is not enough profit to support scientific research investment, and the scientific research of many seed companies stays at a low level of imitation." He said.
Qian Qian believes that this has brought about serious homogenization of R&D, insufficient depth, weak innovation ability, and serious waste of resources.
In addition, new varieties bred by researchers are difficult to protect. The protection of new crop variety rights often encounters various dilemmas: difficult to discover clues, difficult to identify, difficult to identify, difficult to obtain, etc.
Chen Fan believes that under disorderly competition, varieties are easy to be "stolen" by "decks", resulting in seeds being "sold at a low price", and new varieties bred by spending a lot of manpower and material resources are often resold for hundreds of thousands of yuan, which greatly affects the innovation motivation of scientific researchers.
It is a "tough battle" and a "protracted war"
There is no end to crop breeding and improvement. Turning over the seed industry is a difficult "battle" and a "protracted battle" that must be won.
In the interview, experts proposed that breeding innovation should first change the evaluation system of breeding scientific research.
"Due to historical reasons, the whole industrial chain of seed industry innovation is divided into two parts: breeding talents, breeding technology, breeding resource advantages in public scientific research institutions, seed industry management talents, seed production bases, and product promotion systems belong to enterprises. The consequence of the segmentation is that the advanced seed technology of scientific research institutions cannot match the needs of enterprises, and seed enterprises cannot find new technologies suitable for their own needs. Qian Qian believes that the cooperation between science and technology enterprises is an important measure to turn over the seed industry and revitalize the seed industry.
Qian Qian suggested that we should further deepen the cooperation between science and technology enterprises, promote the integration of production, education and research, establish a basic theory of breeding, germplasm resource innovation, high-tech and common technology research system with scientific research units as the main body, and a commercial breeding system with enterprises as the main body, build a new industry-university-research collaborative research model, and promote national alliance and collaboration.
In February this year, Yazhou Bay Seed Laboratory and China Seed Group joined hands with teams from 2 scientific research institutions across the country to carry out joint research on 67 projects on four major crops: corn, soybean, rice and vegetables.
"The scientific research fund is provided by half by the laboratory and paid by the enterprise half, and the evaluation is not only based on the paper, but only on whether the results are solved and whether they can be promoted in the market." Xu Ke, deputy general manager of the operation and management center of Nanfan Silicon Valley of China Seed Group, said that enterprises come up with problems, colleges and universities come up with wisdom, achievements are shared, and benefits are feedback, and the "unveiling" system has doubled the vitality of innovation subjects.
It is worth mentioning that in 2022, the General Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued a notice on supporting the development of national seed industry formation enterprises. The relevant person in charge of the Seed Industry Management Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in an interview with reporters that to promote the self-reliance and self-improvement of seed science and technology, we must give full play to the integration role of the "main board" of advantageous seed enterprises, so that they are like computer motherboards, so that scientific research, production, market, investment, etc. can find the corresponding "interface" and promote the rapid output and transformation of innovation results.
After the formation of a joint force between science and technology enterprises, it is the top priority to clarify the research direction, and it is also the premise of concentrating on big things.
"Accelerating the innovation of agricultural biological breeding and building a modern seed industry innovation system is the fundamental path to achieve independent and controllable seed sources." Wan Jianmin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and expert in rice molecular genetics and breeding, said.
Wan Jianmin divided the development of biological breeding into four stages: 1.0 era is farm breeding, 2.0 era is hybrid breeding, 3.0 era is molecular breeding, and 4.0 era is "biotechnology + artificial intelligence + big data information technology" breeding.
"At present, developed countries have entered the 4.0 era, and China is still moving from the 2.0 era to the 3.0 era. At present, the global agricultural biotechnology is iteratively upgraded, and the competition in biological breeding is intensifying. Major breakthroughs have been made in major gene mining and functional analysis, and new technologies such as intelligent design and synthetic biology are advancing and applying at an increasingly rapid speed, and we urgently need to promote the leapfrog development of the seed industry. Wan Jianmin said.
Sun Qixin pointed out that it is necessary to further improve the commercial protection mechanism of breeding materials and the breeding patent system, and strengthen the protection of breeding innovation results.
"Seeds are the 'chips' of agriculture." Qian Qian said, "It is the mission of breeders in the new era to develop China's seed industry, realize self-reliance and self-improvement in seed science and technology, and independent and controllable seed sources." (Science and Technology Daily)