An Overview of the Current Status of Germplasm Resource Protection and Utilization in China
Since the Seed Law of the People's Republic of China came into effect in 2000, it has played an important role in raising the level of variety breeding, cultivating diverse entities for seed production and operation, and regulating the order of the seed market. However, with the development of the socialist market economy, many new situations have emerged in China's seed production and operation, and some provisions of the Seed Law no longer fit. To this end, in April 2015, the “Seed Law of the People's Republic of China (Revised Draft)” submitted for deliberation by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress was released for public comment, and the issue of protection and utilization of germplasm resources, which serves as the foundation of breeding, also attracted widespread attention due to its “foundational” and “strategic” characteristics.
Germplasm resources are the genetic material passed from parents to offspring. They are the material basis for breeding new varieties and also a strategic resource on which humanity depends for survival and development. There are about 300,000 species of plants on Earth, harboring abundant germplasm resources. Tapping and utilizing even a small portion of them would be enough to open up broad prospects for crop breeding. To date, more than 1,400 germplasm banks of various types have been built worldwide, storing more than 7 million accessions of germplasm resources (including duplicate holdings by various countries), of which China's total long-term conserved germplasm resources amount to 450,000 accessions, ranking second in the world.
How important is the “wild foundation”?
What exactly is the role of protecting the “wild foundation” in the development of agriculture and forestry?
Liu Xu, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, used the “first green revolution” as an example: from the 1960s to the 1980s, hybridization breeding techniques were used internationally to introduce dwarfing genes from rice and wheat germplasm resources into other varieties, thus setting off the wave of the “first green revolution.” This revolution reduced the “height” of major crops worldwide, while improving disease resistance, lodging resistance and yield. To this day, dwarf types still dominate among the world's major crops, and germplasm resources carrying dwarfing genes have played an indispensable role in this.
The reason why China's famous hybrid rice expert and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Yuan Longping was able to achieve great success in the field of hybrid rice is that he discovered and applied the male sterile line of wild rice.
In the 1950s, wheat stripe rust became pandemic in China. This epidemic disease, known as “wheat cancer,” is characterized by a wide occurrence area, high epidemic frequency and severe damage losses, and can cause enormous losses in wheat yield.
Li Zhensheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the founder of distant hybridization breeding of wheat in China, discovered that tall wheatgrass has good resistance to stripe rust. After 20 years of effort, he led his research group to successfully transfer the disease-resistant and stress-resistant genes of wheatgrass into wheat, breeding new wheat varieties of the Xiaoyan series such as Xiaoyan 4, 5, 6, 54 and 81, among which Xiaoyan 6 alone was promoted on a cumulative area of 150 million mu, increasing grain output by 4 billion kg.
This is known in China's agricultural breeding history as the “marriage of forage grass and wheat.”
Hong Deyuan, a famous botanist and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has long been devoted to the study of peonies. He said: “Wild peonies are only purple, white and yellow. Among the nine major color series of peonies, pink, red, green, blue, black and variegated did not exist before.”
Once plain-faced, today brilliantly colorful, what changes has the peony undergone to become the “king of flowers”? Through genomic research on dozens of traditional peony varieties, Hong Deyuan found that most of them originated from hybridization among several wild varieties from regions such as Henan, Shaanxi, Sichuan and Gansu.
Therefore, germplasm resources are not only linked to the breeding of new varieties in agriculture and forestry, but also to the sustainable development of China's agriculture and forestry and to food security, and at present they are also an important guarantee underpinning the initiative in the era of the bioeconomy.
What is the “family fortune” of China's germplasm resources?
According to Academician Liu Xu, China is one of the world's eight centers of crop origin, among which the most famous crops include rice, soybean, tea and so on.
Since the implementation of the Seed Law, China has vigorously promoted the construction of agricultural germplasm resource banks (gardens), conserving 450,000 accessions of various crop germplasm resources for the long term, ranking second in the world in quantity, collecting more than 50,000 accessions of wild plant germplasm resources, introducing more than 23,000 accessions of germplasm resources from abroad, and protecting 59 endangered species; it has built 100 national crop improvement centers for 26 crops, 46 national key laboratories and 59 national engineering technology research centers; it has launched special projects for molecular breeding and the establishment of industrial technology systems for 36 crops, and created more than 10,000 breeding materials with application value.
According to statistics, using these excellent germplasm resources, relevant scientific research institutions have bred more than 350 new varieties of grain, cotton, oil crops, tea, vegetables, fruits and others, with a promotion area of 198 million mu, generating enormous social and economic benefits, with direct output value reaching more than 10 billion yuan.
In forestry, 2,126 nature reserves have been established, covering an area of 1.84 billion mu, about 12.8% of the national land area; 2,583 forest parks have been established, covering an area of 252 million mu, and 2.85 million rare ancient and famous trees have been listed and protected; 13 national special protection banks and 22 comprehensive protection banks for forest tree germplasm resources have been established, conserving more than 2,000 tree species and more than 50,000 accessions of forest tree germplasm resources.