Stories of High-Quality Development | The 'confidence' of a Chinese seed

Narrator: Qian Qian, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Rice Molecular Geneticist

How to ensure that a seed comes with the best genes from the moment it's created?  "Nanfan Silicon Valley" in south China's Hainan Province provides an answer.

This is a rice plant. After autumn harvests in the northern part or other regions in China, it must endure a long winter dormancy...

But by bringing breeding materials to the Nanfan Scientific and Research Breeding Base in Hainan, researchers can shorten breeding cycles through speed breeding. That's not all – during selection, LiDAR, hyperspectral cameras are used, and a variety of sensors are operated to run a full diagnostic check on the breeding material in real time. By analyzing these materials' genotypes alongside their phenotype-environment interaction responses, more comprehensive genotypic-phenotypic data is obtained. The collected data is transmitted in real-time to the National Crop Phenotyping Research Facility and the big data center in Sanya Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City, where massive amounts of breeding data are combined with advanced big data algorithms – blazing a new trail in smart breeding and achieving acceleration in cultivar development.

At the base, the focus has shifted beyond staple crop breeding to include cotton, hemp, oil crops, tubers, fruits, vegetables, flowers, medicinal herbs, and timber (over 40 species). More than 70 percent of China's cultivated crop varieties have undergone refinement at this hub.

The base equips Chinese seeds with cutting-edge tech, and turns each seed into a promise of higher yields and increased incomes.

Today, Hainan is not just a year-round modern breeding base; it's the solid guarantee of China's food supply and is becoming a world-class engine for innovation in the seed industry.