In May, Jiagu's first seed company settled in the Zhang Night Market in the Hexi Corridor.

The good base environment in Hexi, especially the Gobi Oasis, has good natural isolation conditions, which is a very ideal "natural workshop" for the professional production of crop seeds.

This is the country's largest and most advantageous vegetable and flower foreign trade seed production base and an important hybrid corn seed production base, and it is also the best place for seed breeding of various crops recognized in the world.

As an agricultural enterprise, especially one that is interested in the development of the whole industry chain, it is unforgivable to ignore the seed industry.

With the expansion of Jiagu's own planting area and the planting area of affiliated cooperatives, the issue of high-quality seed sources has been put on the agenda.

Qi Zheng had never taken the time to enter the seed industry before, but before coming to Su Province, he was reminded by his senior brother Chen Jianzhang, and only then did he realize that Jiagu had made up for this link at ten times.

In the development of agricultural production, seed technology is the core, the most basic and the most important key technology.

Each breakthrough in varieties has greatly promoted the transformation of agricultural production methods. Biological breeding is the general trend of the development of the seed industry, and if you want to take the initiative in the future, you must actively do a good job in technical reserves.

For thousands of years, Chinese farmers have kept their own seeds, constantly selecting and optimizing varieties according to climate change and changing demand, and this farmer-centered seed system has become the ecological foundation for maintaining China's farming traditions.

With this seed system, China has fed more than a billion people. At the same time, in this ecosystem, farmers also protect 75% of the world's seed resources, realizing the harmonious development of farmers and nature, production and environmental protection.

However, with the development of urbanization, the gap between the two figures of domestic population and arable land will widen, and China currently has 21 of the world's population, but only 9 of the arable land.

A very important question is before us: how will our country increase its yields to feed the food needs of its growing population?

From the experience of world agricultural development in the past 100 years, 60% of the improvement of agricultural production efficiency comes from seed technology. Look.Mao.Line.Chinese.Text.Net

The combination of biological breeding technology and conventional breeding technology can quickly break through the technical bottleneck and gradually approach the theoretical potential yield of crops, which is an important technical method to effectively solve the problem of high grain yield.

The two breeding techniques that we are most familiar with are cross breeding and transgenic breeding.

Needless to say, whether it is hybrid rice or hybrid wheat, our country is in a leading position in the world.

Mr. Yuan's hybrid rice technology has gone abroad and is playing a significant role in the food shortage problem in the world, especially in developing countries, and is known as "China's fifth greatest invention" by the world.

But hybrid wheat is not well known, and in fact it is just as great.

After more than ten years of improvement and hybridization, Professor Ru, a wheat expert, finally bred the Wenmin male sterile line BNS next year, turning the "semi-sterile" into a 100 sterile line, and "gnawing off" the "hardest bone" in hybrid wheat research.

Qi Zheng has the impression that more than ten years later, he has finally made a major breakthrough in a series of key technical fields such as the creation and breeding of excellent parents of hybrid wheat, the formulation of strong dominant combinations, and large-scale and efficient seed production.

This means that we can prepare high-quality wheat varieties when we need high-quality wheat, prepare large ears when we need large ears, and prepare multi-ears if we need multiple ears. This is not only of high application value in the main wheat producing areas, but also can affect important research results in other regions.

As for GMOs, uh, it's hard to put it into words...... Regardless of whether everyone really understands GMO technology or not, they can say a thing or two about safety issues anyway, and the two factions in favor of GMO and anti-GMO have been arguing with each other.

In fact, Qi Zheng thinks that there is no good or bad technology, and genetically modified technology is like nuclear weapons, it does not have to be used, but it must be available.

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However, the advantages of China's two major staple grains in breeding cannot hide the huge disadvantages in seed commercialization.

In the past 30 years, farmers' traditional breeding practices have been almost wiped out and subverted. Compared to other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the commodification of domestic seeds has reached an alarming level.

But the tragedy is that in the entire seed industry chain system, in terms of pesticides, seeds, fertilizers, breeding technology, etc., China is far behind the world's top ten seed companies.

Since the promulgation of the Seed Law in 2000, China's seed industry has embarked on a journey of marketization. All kinds of capital have entered the seed market, large and small seed companies have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, there are private and Sino-foreign joint ventures, there are scientific research institutes run by themselves, there are agricultural technology extension personnel "self-reliance portal", and even "leather bag companies".

However, data shows that there are thousands of seed enterprises in China, and there are less than 100 seed enterprises integrating breeding, reproduction and promotion. The vast majority of businesses are small and scattered.

"Take Monsanto in the United States, for example, the company's corn seed business alone has global sales of more than one billion US dollars, or more than 10 billion yuan. It is rare for domestic corn seed enterprises to sell 100 million yuan. Not at all on an order of magnitude. Chen Jianzhang commented.

However, the most fatal thing is that most of the domestic seed industry enterprises do not have independent research and development capabilities.

"For a long time, the core of domestic seed industry research has been in scientific research institutes rather than enterprises. More than 80 varieties are from scientific research units. There are less than 15 domestic seed enterprises with R&D and innovation capabilities, and the vast majority of enterprises generally invest in R&D at 1 or even less than 1 in their sales. Speaking of this, Chen Jianzhang was heartbroken.

"In contrast, multinational companies like Monsanto and Pioneer generally invest about 10% of their sales revenue in R&D, or even more. Take Pioneer as an example, where the best talent in the world is gathered, and it has the most basic and global resources, so much that it can reach a country. Chen Jianzhang, who had the honor to visit Pioneer Company, sighed.

The laboratory is naturally the core of the seed company, but Qi Zheng always feels that Chen Jianzhang's heartache is hinting at increasing laboratory funds.

Qi Zheng said, "Therefore, it is difficult for a single seed company to compete with multinational companies. Domestically, it is either to buy them out, or to concentrate the country's scientific research units and join forces with larger enterprises to counter powerful multinationals. ”

Chen Jianzhang laughed and said, "How is it possible to acquire them?" ”

Qi Zheng, who knew that Syngenta would be acquired by China in the future, smiled and said nothing.

"In short, most of the market share is now occupied by a few big seed players, such as Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, etc. Moreover, these big players not only sell seeds, but usually, they will sell these seeds with specific fertilizers and pesticides, so as to control a complete industrial chain. Therefore, domestic seed enterprises are not only facing a single multinational seed company, but a huge international industrial chain. ”

"I don't ask you to compete with multinational seed companies in ten years, but at the very least, you must ensure that Jiagu's own seed needs are met. Qi Zheng asked Chen Jianzhang.

For the country and the people, our rice bowl must be firmly held in our hands at all times.

Chen Jianzhang blinked and said with a smile, "Be willing to invest, wait patiently, there is always hope." ”

Jiagu Seed Industry has established a production base and processing center for malting barley seeds, corn seeds and forage seeds in Suzhou Province, corresponding to the major types of crops currently grown in Jiagu.

"There will be input, and there will be results, and the family will wait for your 'rice' to go to the pot, anyway, you can watch it. Qi Zheng teased.

But I was thinking that for agriculture, whoever has "seeds" will be proud. Their competitiveness is still too weak just by relying on the laboratory, and it seems that they have to rely on him to sacrifice the means of hanging from time to time.

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