China's fresh-eating corn planting area reaches 12 million mu
Fresh-eating corn has high economic returns, and many provinces and cities across the country are vigorously promoting fresh-eating corn as a cash crop, with huge market development potential. On July 6, the 2015 National Fresh-eating Corn Academic Symposium and Southern Fresh-eating Corn Conference was held at the Ezhou Research Base of Hubei Provincial Seed Group.
Wang Liming, president of the Fresh-eating Corn Branch of the Crop Science Society of China and director of the Corn Research Institute of the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said at the conference that China's fresh-eating corn market value has reached 30 billion yuan, making it a major country in fresh-eating corn research and development, production and consumption. The fresh-eating corn planting area has reached 12 million mu, of which sweet corn covers 6 million mu, the highest in the world, and there are more than 1,100 fresh-eating corn processing enterprises nationwide.
The conference had the theme of “supporting innovation in the fresh-eating corn industry and promoting the development of the modern seed industry”, and received a total of 214 sweet and waxy corn varieties from more than 80 research institutions and enterprises across the country, the largest number of exhibiting varieties in past years. Academician Fu Tingdong of Huazhong Agricultural University, Li Liqiu, secretary-general of the China Seed Association, Zhang Baomin, secretary-general of the Crop Science Society of China, and other experts attended the opening ceremony.
The organizing committee of this conference adopted an innovative conference model of multi-party cooperation featuring “research institutions + agricultural media + industry associations + enterprises”, and also held activities including field displays of fresh-eating corn varieties, academic seminars and industry roundtable forums, the 2015 National Top Ten Sweet and Waxy Corn Display Variety Selection, the 2015 Southern Fresh-eating Corn Top Ten Leaders Selection, and fresh-eating corn tasting. Nearly 1,000 person-times attended the conference, including experts, scholars, seed enterprises, distributors and large-scale growers from all sectors of the fresh-eating corn industry.