Seed companies join hands with research centers: market-oriented cooperation is refreshing
Original title: Research centers: the new standard configuration for seed companies
The raspberry industrial park in Nanhe County, Hebei Province, covers more than 2,700 mu. The park integrates raspberry breeding, planting, research and development, and sales, and has a standardized tissue culture room of more than 4,000 sq m. It can cultivate 15 million raspberry seedlings each year, and more than 300 farming households have found the road to prosperity by growing raspberries. The photo shows technicians at the raspberry industrial park inoculating raspberry tissue-cultured seedlings on June 9. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Mou Yu
San Nong Express comprehensive report: laboratories, breeding stations, experimental fields... these breeding and research sites are increasingly becoming the "standard configuration" of seed industry enterprises. What kind of configuration is this standard configuration? How do researchers in seed companies work? How is it different from research institutes?
Recently, the editorial department of Modern Seed Industry Weekly specially invited several observers to enter the breeding and research and development centers of seed companies, to "work alongside" researchers "inside enterprises" for a day, and bring this set of "Seed Company Laboratory Logs."
Seedling tissue culture laboratory -
"Harsh" environment breeds new cauliflower varieties
In the seedling tissue culture laboratory of Tianjin Gengyun Seed Industry, Ji Heliang and his assistant are busy checking the progress of cultivating tissue-cultured seedlings of a new cauliflower variety - rows of neatly arranged culture bottles of tissue-cultured seedlings on the cultivation racks and all kinds of equipment in the laboratory are refreshing to the eye.
At present, Gengyun Seed Industry is working on cultivating a new cauliflower variety with stronger adaptability and better quality than imported varieties - loose-curd cauliflower. It has now entered the demonstration planting stage, and the seeds can be brought to market soon. As the head of the company, Ji Heliang has recently put almost all his energy into the laboratory.
In recent years, market demand for cauliflower has been constantly changing, and loose-curd cauliflower is deeply loved by consumers for its tender green stalks and crisp, sweet quality. Loose-curd cauliflower is also called "organic cauliflower." This "organic" is not that organic. The so-called "organic cauliflower" is only a variety of cauliflower and does not necessarily mean cauliflower grown by organic methods. Rather, because its place of origin has quite superior growing conditions and it can reach the quality of organic food, it is called "organic cauliflower." Compared with ordinary cauliflower, this cauliflower has slender stems and loose curds, looks like a bouquet, and its taste is also very popular.
"Loose-curd cauliflower is very easy to grow; it is the selection and breeding stage that is relatively difficult." Ji Heliang said in an introduction that recently Tianjin Gengyun Seed Industry has taken cruciferous vegetables as a key breeding direction, done plenty of work to improve seed quality, and carefully cultivated loose-curd cauliflower.
In order to collect raw materials more suitable for tissue-cultured seedlings and continuously domesticate them, Ji Heliang went to various places in the south many times to search. "Since it is selection and breeding, one must see a lot and go far. Selecting the best from many and the pure from the refined is the only way to breed excellent varieties even better."
Hard work pays off. After unremitting efforts, Ji Heliang finally found the raw materials for loose-curd cauliflower. During the cultivation process, because the survival rate of tissue-cultured seedlings was not very high, Ji Heliang became even more cautious. Every time tissue-cultured seedlings were made, Ji Heliang personally went to the laboratory to supervise and guide. "Sometimes it is hard to say why, but the tissue-cultured seedlings become contaminated. The culture medium and the stems and leaves of the raw materials must be handled aseptically, but even so, success cannot be 100% guaranteed. Any that can survive are the best tissue-cultured seedlings."
In the tissue culture laboratory, the author personally experienced every procedure of making tissue-cultured seedlings. One staff member meticulously cut the curd of the raw material off completely, then removed the flower buds on the curd. Another staff member cut the short stem of the curd into small pieces of more than 1 cm for aseptic treatment. All the cauliflower was carefully planted into culture bottles, uniformly placed into the culture medium, and cultivated. "The growth temperature for tissue-cultured seedlings is 21°C to 25°C, and the light period is generally 14 to 16 hours. It does not matter if the planting season is missed; just let the tissue-cultured seedlings keep growing in the bottle. After small seedlings grow, cut them, replace the culture medium, and once the complete tissue-cultured seedlings are planted in the field, they can grow." Ji Heliang said.
The laboratory's scientific and technological support provides a solid foundation for cultivating new cauliflower varieties. Ji Heliang said in an introduction that the breeding direction is mainly to surpass the original variety, yet a new variety must have broad adaptability. Relying on the laboratory to simulate harsh environments and make seedlings mutate can derive new germplasm resources. Each culture bottle is marked with different letters and numbers to distinguish the batch and time of cultivated seedlings, for example "T-1.2": T is the batch code, and 1.2 is January 2.
After coming out of the laboratory, Ji Heliang went to the planting greenhouse to inspect the growth of loose cauliflower. "Green stalks and loose curds" is a standard for judging whether loose cauliflower is growing well, while a cauliflower shape resembling a mushroom indicates that the surface of the loose cauliflower buds should be uniform, and therefore judges the quality. Ji Heliang casually parted a cauliflower plant beside him. "The appearance of this cauliflower is very good. The surface of the cauliflower is very neat and meets the loose standard, and the taste is crisp and sweet." Speaking of this, Ji Heliang smiled with satisfaction. (Wu Xiaoxiao, Liu Andong)
Rice breeding station -
Researchers' "occupational habit"
This is the author's second visit to the Jiamusi Rice Breeding Station of Kenfeng Seed Industry.
It was rice transplanting season. Walking on the long field ridges, patches of experimental fields were like bright mirrors, and countless lovely little green elves in the fields lined up neatly, giving off the fragrance of soil and competing to dance in the wind, each with a different dance pose.
These little green elves each have different identities. From the F1 generation to the F8 generation, there are more than 30,000 in total. They are new rice varieties developed and cultivated on a large scale by combining conventional breeding with multi-path breeding techniques, innovatively introducing cold-tolerant, multi-resistant, and broadly adaptable resources, and using high identification intensity and selection pressure. After these rounds of selection, perhaps one variety will become a delicious staple on the dining table in the near future. Whether these varieties can reach the market as early as possible mainly depends on breeders' long-term observational identification of their phenotypes, and then effective selection, combination, regulation, and fine management of their genotypes.
"Breeding is different now from the past. In addition to continuing to observe in the fields all the time, scientific and technical personnel must also continuously understand market demand, change breeding directions and goals in a timely manner, keep learning, and use emerging technologies to assist breeding. They must effectively refine and analyze the work in each link and strictly supervise it, with no room for carelessness. Only in this way can breeding efficiency be improved." Xu Xide, chief scientist of rice breeding at Kenfeng Seed Industry, stood in the experimental field, busy guiding rice transplanting while giving an introduction.
Xu Xide manages the Jiamusi Rice Breeding Station. The park has a total experimental area of 135 mu and currently has 10 breeding staff members.
In the words of the researchers, the breeding station is their home. They eat here, live here, and carefully tend this homeland. Zong Shujuan was changing the soil for the potted plants she was propagating: "These flowers will be transplanted in a few days to the places previously planned and designed." Interestingly, Zong Shujuan neatly inserted labels for every flower, just like the "occupational habit" of a breeding worker. Not only Zong Shujuan; this kind of "occupational habit" is reflected in almost everything every breeding staff member does, even in small matters. Although they deal with soil every day, the breeding station is neat and orderly everywhere, equipment and machinery are arranged neatly, the scientific and technical personnel's dormitories are clean and comfortable, and the fruit trees and various vegetables planted in the open spaces of the park are arranged in an orderly mix of heights.