The breeding of high quality, high yield and water saving wheat in China needs to be strengthened.

"At present, China's high-quality and high-yield water-saving wheat varieties can not meet the production needs well." Academician Liu Xu, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, made the above comments at the Seventh National Symposium on Wheat Genetics and Breeding held in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province.

Liu Xu believes that in the past ten years, China's wheat harvest has been bumper year after year, new varieties have played an important role in yield increase, the main wheat producing areas have generally realized 1~2 variety replacement, among which the most prominent are Shandong "Jimai 22" and Henan "Aikang 58". However, some outstanding problems have emerged in wheat production in recent years, and new and higher requirements have been put forward for new varieties.

The problem is mainly manifested in three aspects: firstly, the impact of climate change is increasingly obvious. For example, extreme low temperature occurred in the middle of April in northern Anhui and southern Henan in 2013, resulting in serious yield reduction of about 30 million mu of wheat; from the end of May to the beginning of June 2014, high temperature of 35~38 ℃ occurred continuously in Huanghuai wheat area, resulting in serious yield reduction in Hebei and other places. Second, the disease problem is becoming more and more serious. Fusarium wilt has become the most important disease in Huanghuai wheat area. In 2012, the serious disease area was about 150 million mu, and some areas of Huanghuai were also quite serious in recent three years. In 2014, sheath blight occurred widely in Henan Province. A new stripe rust race V26 with strong pathogenicity and rapid development appeared, which made Yr26 and Yr10, which were widely used in the main wheat producing areas of China, lose their resistance to stripe rust, and the synthetic wheat, hayseed wheat translocation lines and Guinong lines lost their resistance to stripe rust. Leaf rust was quite serious in the main wheat producing areas in 2015. The third is the problem of focusing on production over quality.