Green super rice has "superpowers"

Water-saving and drought-resistant, high-quality and high-yielding, service "Belt and Road" along the 18 countries and regions
red
super rice
has "super capacity
"for Africa and Asia's resource-poor areas to cultivate green super rice" project completed the world's largest plant genome resequencing, cultivate a number of drought-resistant, salt-resistant, flood-resistant, nutrient-efficient rice new Varieties, improve the "Belt and Road" along the 18 countries and regions of rice production
capacity, creating a huge socio-economic benefits



The project adopts innovative green super rice molecular breeding techniques and strategies to cultivate new varieties of high-yielding, high-quality and multi-resistant green super rice in 18 countries and regions along the Belt and Road, creating great social and economic benefits.
, a reporter for the China Economic Daily, interviewed Li Zhikang, the project's director, to explore the story behind the green super rice.
the needs of
in September 2004, Zhang He, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, first put forward the concept of "green rice".In
, Molecular Plant Breeding published three academic papers, namely, "The Idea of Green Super Rice Cultivation" written by Zhang, "Strategies for China's Rice Molecular Breeding Program" by Li Zhikang of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, IRRI (International Rice Research Institute), and "The Construction of Rice and Other Gene Importation Systems and Molecular Technology Breeding" by Luo Lijun of Shanghai Agricultural Biogene center.
three scientists considered the same problem from different levels and angles, namely, "the long-term and sustainable development of rice breeding". As a result, "green rice" officially changed its name to "green super rice".
the scientific community define such a new concept? Li Zhikang summed it up in 16 words: less pesticides, less fertilizer, water conservation and drought resistance, high-quality and high-yield.
, how Chinese concept of "green super rice" put forward by the Chinese government is internationally recognized and thus moved to all countries in the world?
I'm afraid it starts with Li Zhikang's personal experience. From 1990 to 2003, Li worked at Texas Agricultural University and the Philippine International Rice Institute. Upon his return, he served as a representative scientist for the International Rice Research Institute in China.
In 2008, Microsoft founder Bill Gates came to Beijing to visit Li Zhikang's lab at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and talk to him for nearly 50 minutes.
Li Zhikang proposed that a number of rice varieties adapted to the development needs of third world countries should be developed by combining traditional breeding and molecular breeding, so as to solve the problem of local people's eating.
, in 2008, the project "Green Super Rice for PoorLy Resourced Areas of Africa and Asia" was born with the joint funding of the Chinese government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
project is planned for 10 years and implemented in three phases. The main target countries are nine Asian countries (Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan), nine African countries (Mozambique, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, Liberia, Nigeria, Mali and Senegal) and five provinces of China (Ningxia, Guizhou, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guangxi).
Li Zhikang said that the project's 10-year long-term goal is to rapidly cultivate and promote new varieties of green super rice in Asia and the Sahara Edge of Africa and five provinces in China, so that the average rice production capacity of smallholder farmers in these areas will be increased by more than 20%, resulting in a significant increase in the income of more than 30 million farmers in the target countries.
to date, the Green Super Rice Project has been tested, tested and promoted in 18 African and Asian countries, with 78 high-yield, high-quality and multi-resistant varieties, with a cumulative extension area of 6.12 million hectares.
is one of
's three major food crops and is the most common and widely recognized staple food in the world. Before the green super rice went a country, countries also had their own rice varieties, but there were problems such as unsoluented varieties, low yield and weak ability to resist natural disasters.
2013, a huge typhoon, Haiyan, hit the central Philippine island of Wright, devastating the local agriculture, with large areas of rice fields without grain.
, however, that before the typhoon, some local farmers had obtained some green super rice number 8 from Philippine rice and tried to sow it. Amazingly, after the typhoon, these rice varieties from China not only survived, but also gained a certain amount of yield.
A local farmer said he had harvested 12 sacks of rice from the test and a second test with the seeds, harvesting 70 bags of rice, each weighing 45 to 50 kg, twice as much as the harvest of other varieties. Moreover, the quality of rice is high and the taste is good.
in addition to the vitality and high yield, green super rice 8 is still a precocious variety. This means that farmers can start harvesting rice before the typhoon hits in November.
is such a good rice, how was it developed?
Li Zhikang said that of the 78 varieties covered by green super rice, the parents are basically rice varieties from southern China. On this basis, Li Zhikang led the team for the different needs of different countries, the rice's parent "design" and "transformation."
"For green super rice to have the best genetic combination, it is necessary to 'implant' the target gene it lacks on the basis of the existing good varieties, and to produce a group of excellent offspring who retain the good character of the original high-product species but obtain different new combinations of green characters." Li Zhikang said, for example, in the coastal areas with more typhoon rain, we need to choose flood-resistant varieties, in arid areas such as Africa, to choose drought-resistant varieties.
, a farmer with 40 years of experience growing rice in Valangal, Tyrengangan, India, was pleasantly surprised to see green super rice varieties on television and grow them on his five hectares of land. Since then, he has recommended that neighbors and friends facing irrigation and saline problems adopt the Chinese variety.
Wensheng Wang, a member of the project team, said the project funded a systematic assessment of the socio-economic benefits of the project by independent professionals in the Philippines, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Mozambique and Uganda. The report shows that the cultivation of newly cultivated green super rice varieties in the Philippines and Bangladesh, in the Tiantiantian and irrigated ecosystems, has increased by an average of 0.89 to 1.83 tons per hectare over the local main rice varieties, with an average increase of $230.9 per hectare. On this estimate, farmers in target countries in Africa and Asia have so far increased their income by $1.4 billion.
Gary Atlin, senior program officer at the Gates Foundation, said the Green Super Rice project had achieved its desired goals, with some of China's varieties playing an even more important role in Asia and African countries than expected, and the project had achieved collaboration among scientific institutions and scientists at all levels in several countries.
Results
In the face of the frequent extreme weather conditions around the world, improving rice production capacity in most rain-fed areas of Asia and Africa and maintaining rice productivity in the world's irrigated rice fields are the biggest challenges facing rice breeding experts worldwide in the coming decades.
Green super rice is defined as a rice variety that can stabilize high yields with less input, especially with strong resistance and recovery to the interference of extreme adversity caused by frequent climate change, and is an important concept to meet the challenges facing rice production in the future. In the 10 years since its implementation, the project has achieved significant results.
In theoretical research, the world's largest plant genome resequencing project was completed: 3000 rice core species of whole genome resequencing, the genome diversity of rice core species was analyzed at the whole genome level, and the application of rice functional genome research results in breeding was promoted.
In practice, using molecular breeding techniques and strategies, we have cultivated a number of new varieties that are drought-resistant, salt-resistant, flood-resistant and nutrient-efficient, and achieved the goal of using fewer pesticides, less fertilizer, saving water and drought, and high-quality and high-yielding rice production.
Li Zhikang said that in the short term, to cultivate more and better adaptation to climate change green super rice varieties, and match the corresponding green production and efficiency technology, maximize the role of green super rice varieties in these target countries to increase production and efficiency, promote the sustainable development of agriculture in target countries, so as to truly improve the income of small farmers in these target countries, which urgently need breeding, cultivation, plant protection, agricultural machinery and agricultural economy and other multidisciplinary collaboration. At the same time, there is an urgent need to establish a flexible, efficient and safe new model of species resource exchange and variety export management to minimize policy barriers to agricultural technology and variety export.
refore, concentrating domestic advantages, while helping resource-poor countries to develop agriculture, relieve the pressure of China's own agricultural production and ensure China's food security, is still an important issue facing the vast number of agricultural science and technology workers.