Our reporter Liu Changlin, Luo Jiang, Chen Kaizi
Sunshine, beaches, coconut groves... Sanya, Hainan and other places in the 18° north latitude region of our country have long become well-known tourist resorts due to their unique climatic conditions.
However, in this hot land, the story of a group of southern breeding researchers chasing dreams is rarely known.
Since the end of 2020, reporters have gone to Nanfan base 7 times and have in-depth contact with these obscure and hard-working people in Nanfan in the fields. They found that they not only hold up the solid foundation of the "Chinese rice bowl", but also erect a monument on the spiritual high ground. .
From Yuan Longping’s discovery of the magical wild rice that opened a breakthrough in hybrid rice research, to the "migratory bird-like" scientific research and breeding of thousands of breeders, in their sweat, grains of fine varieties sucked up the sun and rain here, crossing the strait, and after thousands of trials. The country "spreads branches and leaves."
Through southern propagation, my country's main crops have been updated 6 to 7 times, and the yield increase rate of each variety update is more than 10%.
"A seed can change a world, and a variety can benefit a nation."
It's another season in the south, and the new and old Nanfan people who arrived as scheduled start a new journey of "chasing light": to promote the revitalization of the seed industry, and firmly control the agricultural "chips" in their own hands.
A magical wild rice opens the "dream of enjoying the cool under the grass"
More than 40 kilometers west of Sanya's city center, the ancient city of Yazhou stands on the sea wall.
History has left a mottled mark here, and nature has also filled the alluvial plain at 18°N latitude with light and heat.
On October 26, good news came from this field of hope: the double-cropping rice yield per mu in the Batou Nanfan Public Experimental Base in Yazhou District exceeded 1,500 kg, fulfilling the last wish of "the father of hybrid rice" Yuan Longping.
In December of last year, Yuan Longping, who was already in ill health, still insisted on presiding over the research meeting and urged everyone to "implement" the target of 1,500 kg per mu of double-cropping rice.
"We did not live up to the trust of Teacher Yuan." Cao Bing, the vice president of Hainan University, recalled. At the beginning of this year, Yuan Longping saw the photos of early rice taken by researchers in Sanya. He also said "I am very satisfied." have a look".
A magical wild rice made Yuan Longping and Nan Fan have an indissoluble bond.
According to the "three-line matching" theory of hybrid rice designed by Yuan Longping, the seeds of male sterile lines must be found.
However, Yuan Longping and his team members did more than 3,000 cross-combination experiments, but none of them reached 100% sterility every year.
In 1968, Yuan Longping set foot on the South Island of Shanghai for the first time to carry out scientific research on southern propagation and breeding, and tried to find wild rice for distant hybridization.
Two years later, his student Li Bihu discovered a male sterile wild rice plant with pollen abortion at Nanhong Farm in Sanya, which opened a breakthrough for hybrid rice research.
Since then, from the success of the three-line hybrid rice system to the two-line method, to the breakthrough of super hybrid rice yield per mu, it has repeatedly set records... Behind the climbing of scientific research peaks, Yuan Longping has come to Hainan every year like migratory birds.
He said many times during his lifetime: "Half of the credit for the success of hybrid rice should be attributed to Nanfan."
Not only rice, more than 70% of the new crop varieties that have been bred across the country have been cultivated in the southern propagation base.
Since the 1950s, a total of 600,000 people have come to Hainan to carry out scientific research and breeding of southern propagation, which has built a solid foundation for the "Chinese rice bowl".
It is difficult to give up the dream of breeding, and it is difficult to explain the love of South China.
For a sprouting seed, some Nanfan people left the last moments of their lives in this beloved land.
In February 2004, Chen Xueqiu, an expert in breeding of southern reproduction of Jilin Agricultural University, suffered from liver cirrhosis, liver cancer, sepsis and other diseases. He still insisted on the work of southern reproduction, and finally fell on the front line of scientific research. Half of his ashes were scattered near Sanya. The other half of the sea is buried in the Nanfan base where he has been fighting for it all his life.
On December 18, Sanya rice breeding expert Yuan Jingtian passed away.
He devoted himself to researching the cultivation of new hybrid rice varieties, rooted in farmland for more than ten years, and devoted himself to transforming scientific research results into the "hands" of farmers.
As early as February 2020, his body was abnormal. He not only narrowed his vision when looking at things, but also showed symptoms of hand numbness.
At first he thought it was caused by being too tired to work in the field, but his condition continued to worsen and he was diagnosed with pituitary tumor in the hospital.
After all-out treatment, he died unfortunately.
For breeders, the best variety is always the next.
With the "dream of enjoying the coolness under the grass" in mind, Yuan Longping still presided over the research on hybrid rice single-season and double-season yield per mu, as well as scientific research on salt-tolerant rice in his later years.
“China’s per capita arable land is small, and Academician Yuan Longping has repeatedly emphasized that'the pursuit of high yield is an eternal theme'.” said Li Jianwu, director of the cultivation room of the Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center. Under Yuan Longping’s inspiration and encouragement, a large number of scientific researchers continue to push for higher yields. , And focus on cultivating more resistant and better quality rice varieties to help farmers in various regions increase production and income.
On the southern prosperous soil, the four seasons present a vivid picture of sowing, tilling and harvesting.
Scientific research continues, and the newly planted seedlings show a strong green in the Batou South Propagation Public Experimental Base, where the rice has just been harvested.
Researchers from China Agricultural University, Nanjing Agricultural University, Hainan University and other universities shuttled through the fields, leading farmers to sow and plant seedlings for breeding materials.
In addition to continuing to attack new high-yield targets, this base also undertakes the task of screening and evaluating rice and soybean varieties.
Through the cultivation of different varieties of rice and soybean varieties, and comprehensive evaluation and analysis, scientific researchers select varieties suitable for planting in tropical areas, high yield and strong resistance, and cooperate with foreign agricultural departments, scientific research institutions and enterprises to carry out demonstration planting and promotion.
"In the first half of this year, five high-yielding varieties were selected from 1,000 varieties, with an average yield of 500 jin per mu, far exceeding the yield of less than 300 jin of soybeans grown in tropical regions." Cao Bing introduced that the next step will be Relying on the advantages of variety and technology, combined with the superior land resources and climate conditions of relevant countries, while helping the other side to increase grain production, it also imports agricultural products from the other side to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results.
A stack of field notebooks engraved with the original intention for nearly sixty years
His home is in the north, but like a "migratory bird" going south every year.
It was supposed to be the old age when his children and grandchildren were around their knees and enjoying the family, but he gave all the time to corn.
On November 19th, Cheng Xiangwen, a corn breeding expert from the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hebi City, Henan Province, celebrated his 86th birthday.
It is his birthday wish to try his best to breed more good varieties.
After eating corn-shaped cakes ordered by his colleagues, he hurriedly embarked on a journey to Sanya.
In the Nanbin Farm of Sanya City, Hebi City, Henan Province, the South Propagation Base of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, a prefabricated house built next to the corn field is Cheng Xiangwen's residence.
Give the two-story building to the young man. He hopes that he will be closer to the corn: “It’s convenient to live here. Open the door is the corn field.” A simple wooden bed and a set of tables and chairs are all the belongings, and the desk is always His scientific research notebooks are neatly arranged.
"A seed can change a world, and a variety can benefit a nation." Cheng Xiangwen's notebook always contains this sentence on the title page.
He said that he has been working with corn for decades and thinking about corn, and he can't live without corn in a day. He can't forget this sentence in his heart.
After graduating from college in 1963, Cheng Xiangwen worked as an agricultural technician in Jun County, Hebi City, Henan Province.
Corn is the main local crop, but the yield per mu is only 100 jin.
Once he learned about the growth of corn in the village, an aunt said to him with tears in her tears: "You are a college student, can you think of making an acre of land more than a dozen kilograms of corn? Wowotou has enough, and the children will not Hungry and suffer."
The farmer's request moved him, and he found his goal in life-to cultivate high-yield corn seeds for the villagers.
Corn is planted once a year in the north, and then planted in Hainan Island for another season, which can be used up to two years a year, greatly shortening the breeding cycle.
In 1964, he came to Jiadai on Hainan Island to breed corn seeds. The first batch of hybrids he harvested was taken back to his hometown for farmers to plant. The yield per mu reached five or six hundred catties.
The folks all said: "Xiaocheng brought back'Golden Beans'!"
"It's difficult and annoying to spread south and south."
Although Hainan has beautiful island scenery, in the early stage of breeding in the south, the local economy was very backward and living conditions were extremely difficult.
"Three mice in a sack, ten mosquitoes in one dish, three leeches as belts, and poisonous snakes leaped on to the body", this widely circulated rhetoric is a true portrayal of the harsh environment in Nanfan at that time.
However, with the simple desire to feed the common people, tens of thousands of breeders have overcome numerous difficulties to carry out southern reproduction.
At first, the traffic was inconvenient, and Cheng Xiangwen had to walk for half a month to come to Hainan.
Finding land, planting land, doing research, and going back and forth more than ten miles to the public toilet to pick up manure and fertilize it.
He has lived in a fellow villager’s home for more than 20 years. In his early years, he had to go to the mountains to chop wood and cook. It can be said that he was a farmer while doing scientific research.
Determined to do one thing in a lifetime, he went north and south for dozens of years, and Xiao Cheng with his head covered with blue silk became an old Cheng who dyed his temples with frost.
He has selected and bred 14 new high-yield maize varieties that have passed the examination and approval. Among them, the "Jundan" series have been promoted in a total of more than 300 million acres across the country.
At present, Cheng Xiangwen is still working on breeding high-yield varieties that are more resistant and easy to harvest.
For this reason, he still insists on the world.
Every morning when the dawn broke, he picked up his research notebook and burrowed into the ground to observe and record crop properties.
Simply eat a bowl of noodles at noon, and then return to the field after a short rest.
He said: "Breeding is like cultivating children. You can get familiar with its advantages and disadvantages by doing it yourself, and constantly improve it to make it'successful'."
Soon, Cheng Xiangwen will spend the 57th "Southern Spring Festival" at the base.
But now, he no longer spends the holidays alone, he can also eat hot dumplings like at home.
From Cheng Xiangwen 1 person, renting 8 acres of land to farmers, to a scientific research team of more than 10 people, and 150 acres of high-standard farmland, the Hebi City Academy of Agricultural Sciences has a well-equipped and convenient southern breeding base.
With the accelerated construction of the National Nanfan Scientific Research and Breeding Base (Hainan), the people of Nanfan have bid farewell to the arduous working and living conditions.
In order to implement the national southern propagation plan, Sanya and other places have designated 268,000 acres of national southern propagation scientific research and breeding protection areas and carried out high-standard farmland construction.
Laboratories, apartments, schools, hospitals, etc. are constantly improving, bidding farewell to the "difficult" and "annoying" scientific research of southern reproduction, and the transition from seasonal research to perennial research.
A bug triggered a scientific research "conference war"
Hainan has a tropical and subtropical climate, and is one of the earliest areas where cotton is grown in my country. There are various types of cotton plants in the genus Cotton.
More than 700 years ago, Huang Daopo, respected as the ancestor of the cloth industry, came to Yazhou to learn cotton spinning technology from the local Li people and carry it forward. From this, the reputation of "clothing by the world" was born.
More than 60 years ago, breeders came here to explore cotton breeding in the south in winter, and it took shape in the early 1980s.
Up to now, hundreds of new cotton varieties have been bred in Southern Prosperous Land.
It is another year in the southern growing season. Guo Sandui, a cotton breeding expert from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, arrived as scheduled and came to the Nanbin Farm in Yazhou District to carry out biological cotton breeding.
This hot land once witnessed a "conference battle" in scientific research on insect-resistant cotton led by Guo Sandui.
"The birth of China's insect-resistant cotton was forced out." Guo Sandui recalled that in the early 1990s, there was a big outbreak of cotton bollworm in my country, and general pesticides were no longer helpful.
Severe pests caused a "cotton shortage", and the textile industry, as an important channel for my country's exports to earn foreign exchange at that time, was also hit hard by the shortage of raw materials.
At that time, Monsanto of the United States had developed Bt insect-resistant cotton in 1991. The relevant departments of our country had negotiated with the other side many times, but in the end they were unable to introduce it due to harsh conditions.
In the face of the country's worries, cotton farmers' desire, and the pressing force of foreign seed industries, the country launched the insect-resistant cotton research project, and Guo Sandui was selected as the project leader.
A "battle" of insect-resistant cotton that spans the north and south regions and runs through the entire scientific research chain has been launched.
Working day and night in the laboratory and in the field, Guo Sandui's team achieved success in 1994, making China the second country with independent intellectual property rights of insect-resistant cotton.
Since 1996, in order to accelerate the breeding speed of insect-resistant cotton in China, Guo Sandui's team came to Hainan to carry out southern breeding.
By the winter of 1998, the cotton professional group of the National Variety Approval Committee met in Sanya to approve 4 insect-resistant cotton varieties, which became the first batch of nationally approved insect-resistant cotton varieties in my country.
Although known as the "father of China's insect-resistant cotton," Guo Sandui said that the successful development of my country's insect-resistant cotton is the result of "cooperative operations."
"The whole country is working together, the upper, middle and lower reaches of the country work closely together to climb the peak." Guo Sandui said that his team as the first echelon is responsible for the development of insect resistance genes; the second echelon scientific research unit is responsible for the introduction of insect resistance genes Cotton; the third echelon is breeding units across the country that use insect-resistant germplasm materials to hybridize with local production varieties to cultivate new varieties suitable for local planting; seed industry enterprises, as the fourth echelon, promote the industrialization of new varieties.
Nowadays, the collaborative innovation of the whole industry chain is constantly being staged here.
"The platform is built, the project moves, and talents stay." said Peng Jun, president of the National Institute of Southern Propagation, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences is accelerating the substantive construction of Southern Propagation Research and has created 7 Southern Propagation Research Innovations. The team, 10 achievement transformation teams, this year, the newly-increased scientific research funding of Nanfan reaches 40 million yuan.
The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences is opening up the upper, middle and lower reaches of the southern breeding research: the national germplasm Sanya wild cotton nursery is being built, the world wild rice germplasm resource nursery is being built, the protection and utilization of germplasm resources are strengthened; the national southern breeding crop phenotype research facility is established, Reveal the relationship between crop genes and traits to improve breeding efficiency; build a seed industry innovation laboratory to carry out variety creation, industry incubation...
Vertical penetration and horizontal linkage.
The collaborative innovation atmosphere is getting stronger, and the "research fence" is being broken.
Up to now, more than 20 scientific research institutions and universities, and more than 400 agricultural enterprises have stationed in Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City. The construction of scientific and technological innovation platforms such as the International Corn Technology Innovation and Achievement Transformation Center for Saline-Alkali Rice is progressing in an orderly manner, and the scientific research forces of all parties will be coordinated to jointly tackle key problems.
The rise of a new technology city on the coast of the South China Sea
In June 2020, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Overall Plan for the Construction of Hainan Free Trade Port", which pointed out that the advantages of the national scientific research and breeding base for southern propagation should be used to build a global tropical agriculture center and a global transfer base for the introduction of animal and plant germplasm resources.
In July of this year, the 20th meeting of the Central Deep Reform Commission emphasized to carry out research on key and core technologies of provenance, and solidly promote the construction of innovation bases such as the Southern Silicon Valley.
Relying on Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City, beside the ancient city of Yazhou, a Nanfan Science and Technology City is accelerating its rise.
From a barren area to towering cranes, from gates and birds to people and vehicles, the thousand-year-old city is full of vitality.
In the Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City, the newly-built road "Longping Street" entrusts Nanfan's grief and tribute to Yuan Longping.
"Chuanxin Street" and "Longping Street" lead to the "Revitalization Road". It is the common mission and pursuit of generations of Nanfan people to promote the revitalization of the seed industry.
"People are like seeds, to be a good seed." Yuan Longping's words germinated like seeds in the hearts of young people.
In the past few days, the Hainan Breeding Base of China Agricultural University has been busy.
More than 30 graduate students from the Research Institute of China Agricultural University in Sanya left early and returned late to plant and pollinate corn at the Nanfan base.
Doctoral student Zhu Lin is busy with farm work while writing down crop growth and traits in his notebook.
In addition to going to the ground, Zhu Lin usually goes to the self-study room to do literature research and to do experiments in the laboratory.
"The farming season waits for no one. If you miss it, you can only wait for the next season." Zhu Lin said. Compared with the difficult conditions of the older generation of Nanfan people, nowadays the scientific research equipment and technology are much more advanced. do research.
At present, the Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City has introduced 11 well-known universities with more than 1,100 students in training.
Well-decorated single rooms and double dormitories, dozens of laboratories and research platforms have been constructed one after another...The park provides a full range of supporting guarantees for postgraduate teaching, research and life, deepens the integration of science and education, and lays a solid foundation for the construction of the Southern Silicon Valley.
Libraries, classrooms, and laboratories are open to all students, and even courses and teachers can share them.
Studying and living here, Wei Yuanhao, a master student at Nanjing Agricultural University, feels "openness" the most: "Here is a gathering of top experts in the field of agricultural scientific research in my country. Not only can they listen to teachers from other schools, but also academicians often give lectures."
On November 29, the Yazhou Bay Seed Laboratory launched the first batch of “Revealing the List” project. All the “Revealing Heroes” signed “Military Orders” and launched a general attack on 75 major research projects.
"The hero doesn't ask where it comes from, and the laboratory breaks the boundaries of scientific research units." said Xia Mian, the head of the laboratory's cooperation and communication department, setting up research projects around key common technical problems of provenance, and the person in charge of the project set up a scientific research team on his own.
There is no upper limit on funding, and "milestone" assessments are adopted in stages to guide the team to conquer the "mountain high ground".
Today, when the whole society pays great attention to the innovation of the seed industry, the young people of Nanfan also gain more sense of honor and happiness.
After entering Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City for more than a year, Longping Bio (Hainan) Technology Co., Ltd. has grown into a high-tech seed company with a valuation of more than 2.5 billion yuan.
In the company, from the R&D team to the field management team, they are all young faces.
"Behind everyone's willingness to endure hardship is the incentive for all employees to hold stocks." The company's scientific researcher Di Mengliang said. Towards the common goal of early results, everyone is moving forward with the progress of the experiment, and there is no concept of weekends.
"More importantly, I have a broad space for innovation here, hoping to make a tangible contribution to the revitalization of the seed industry."
Located at the core of Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City, the landmark building industry promotion center is magnificent and full of sense of science and technology.
Fabricated building technology integrates spaces with different shapes and functions, just like a chip with integrated precision components.
Under the guidance of Nanfan's spirit, generations of Nanfan people have worked hard and worked together to tackle tough problems. The dream of firmly grasping the agricultural "chip" is no longer far away.