Let the seeds eat less fertilizer and more grain.

Want farmers to use less chemical fertilizer? Maybe the seeds can absorb fertilizer better. Huang Jianhua, director of the Institute of Biotechnology, Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences, is using barley seeds as a breakthrough to study the efficient use of nitrogen fertilizer. If successful, this study could increase the nitrogen use efficiency of crops from the current 35% to about 60%. It will also benefit rice and wheat close to barley, create a basic innovation platform for provenance agriculture in Shanghai, and provide support for common breeding techniques.

China's high agricultural fertilizer consumption has always been criticized. The per unit yield of rice is similar to that of Japan, but the amount of nitrogen fertilizer used is three times that of Japan. "just as everyone's appetite varies, so does the fertilizer absorption rate of crops." Huang Jianhua said, "at present, the average nitrogen use efficiency of crops is only about 35%, which also means that because most of the fertilizers cannot be absorbed by crops, they flow to rivers, lakes and seas or infiltrate into the soil with farmland drainage." According to statistics, this kind of pollution has become one of the main sources of agricultural non-point source pollution in China.

China is building an environment-friendly and resource-saving agricultural development strategy, and reducing the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers is one of the most important articles. Huang Jianhua said that to reduce pollution, one way to get to the root of the problem is to increase the absorption capacity of crops to nitrogen fertilizer and reduce the loss of chemical fertilizer. At present, he has presided over a project called "New methods of Fertilizer Saving, Disease Resistance and drought Resistance Germplasm based on Cell and Gene level", which plans to use 3 to 5 years to cultivate a new barley variety that can absorb nitrogen fertilizer efficiently. In the case of 20% less than conventional fertilizer, ensure the same yield and quality.

Anyone who is familiar with agriculture knows that it is not easy to come up with a new variety in three to five years. It is also common to spend 10 years from selecting the required traits to crossing homozygous to developing a stable variety. Huang Jianhua said: "in recent years, foreign breeding technology has made rapid progress." Huang Jianhua refers to the internationally popular molecular marker technology and doubling haploid technology, the former can quickly screen the required traits of crops at the molecular level, while the latter can quickly stabilize the traits to form a new variety, with this compound breeding technique, a new variety can be launched in only three or five years.

Huang Jianhua has a deep study of haploid doubling techniques, but wants to launch "nitrogen efficient seeds", but he suffers from not having a good molecular marker. "in fact, in terms of breeding techniques with the highest agricultural science and technology content, there is a considerable gap between China and foreign countries."

Huang Jianhua said that in the past, the main goal of crop breeding in China was high yield, but now, factors such as nutrition, nitrogen efficiency and resistance to diseases and insect pests are becoming more and more important. The development of our own molecular breeding technology is another goal of his heart department.

Not long ago, Dutch Britta eggplant seeds worth 100000 yuan per jin made people realize that agricultural products can also sell for the price of iPhones, but it takes a lot of scientific research to become seeds that can sell at high prices. Huang Jianhua said that the world seed industry research has changed from the traditional conventional technology breeding stage to relying on biotechnology breeding stage. The world seed giants have invested heavily in biotechnology and new variety research and development, developed a large number of new maize, cotton and soybean varieties carrying disease resistance, insect resistance, herbicide tolerance and other target genes, and attached great importance to the collection of germplasm resources. Through mergers and acquisitions, multinational corporations have not only acquired technology and market, but also mastered a large number of germplasm resources.

A few years later, Huang Jianhua hopes to integrate nearly 30 years of breeding experience into common technology to create a basic innovation platform for provenance agriculture in Shanghai. "the construction of agricultural science and technology system is an important part of the construction of scientific and technological innovation center. In order to speed up the development of modern agriculture, Shanghai must grasp the provenance link with the highest added value." Huang Jianhua said.