The embarrassment of the seed: is it difficult not to fake?

Grain is safe all over the world, planting and casting foundation stone. Seed is an irreplaceable means of agricultural production and an important carrier of agricultural scientific and technological progress.

However, as spring ploughing is just around the corner, the Ministry of Agriculture has announced a number of cases of seed fraud, which has aroused social concern. Among them, the case of Hubei Lvmeng Agricultural Trade Co., Ltd. operating fake "red tasseled" sorghum seeds caused farmers to lose 650000 yuan; Yu Zhihong and others in Siping City, Jilin Province manufactured and sold fake and shoddy corn seeds, with complete seed processing, storage and packaging production lines. About 350 tons of bulk corn seeds and more than 6800 bags of finished seeds were seized on the spot. Niu Hui and Niu Xueli in Xinle City, Hebei Province operated fake corn seeds, which were sold to 92 farmers, resulting in a serious reduction in corn production of 482.9 mu and a loss of more than 330, 000 yuan.

Soon, the Ministry of Agriculture launched a special crackdown on the manufacture and sale of fake seeds in 11 provinces in Xiangyang City, Hubei Province, cracking down on the infringement of variety rights and the production and sale of fake and shoddy seeds.

The reporter learned in the interview that the order of China's seed market has obviously improved, but in some inter-provincial border areas, problems such as untried seed market push and license infringement are prominent, which not only damage the interests of farmers and the legitimate rights and interests of variety owners, but also bring risks to agricultural production safety.

Regional seed market chaos can not be ignored

One seed, ten thousand loads of grain. The quality of true or false seeds is closely related to the increase of agricultural production and farmers' income.

The fake corn seed case of Xiudejin Agricultural Materials Co., Ltd., Mudanjiang City, Heilongjiang Province is one of them. In April 2014, according to the reporting clues, the seed Management Office of Mudanjiang City, Heilongjiang Province, investigated and dealt with the suspected fake corn seeds of "Jingdan 28" distributed by Mudanjiang Xiudejin Agricultural material Co., Ltd. After investigation, the fake corn seeds of "Jingdan 28" were produced by Harbin Branch of Shandong Zhouyuan seed Industry Co., Ltd., with 13050 kilograms of seeds involved and illegal gains of 233950 yuan.

In June 2014, the suspect Wang long (pseudonym), who was investigated by the public security organs and processed and packaged fake seeds, was approved to be arrested.

The relevant personnel of the seed Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture introduced to our reporter that in order to focus on solving the problem of regional seed market chaos, safeguarding the interests of farmers and the rights and interests of variety owners, and ensuring the safety of seeds for agricultural production, the Ministry of Agriculture has decided to carry out special crackdown actions on regional seed manufacturing and selling in 11 provinces, including Hebei, Shanxi, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, Henan, Hubei, and Shaanxi.

According to relevant statistics, the domestic seed output in 2013 has reached 16.7 million tons. With the expansion of the domestic seed market, the improvement of market demand, policy promotion and other factors, seed production enterprises will gradually increase in the next few years, and the output shows a steady growth trend.

At the same time, with the continuous improvement of the commercialization rate of various subdivided products in the domestic seed industry, China's seed demand will continue to grow, and it is estimated that China's seed demand will reach 19.95 million tons by 2019.

"generally speaking, the quality of the seed market has improved significantly in recent years." Wang Haichao, deputy director of the seed Management Station in Hanzhong City, Shaanxi Province, told China Science Daily.

In fact, with the introduction of the new license management measures for the production and operation of crop seeds, the number of seed enterprises has gradually decreased, the number of crop varieties has also decreased, and the phenomenon of many varieties, chaos and miscellaneous has improved to a certain extent. "but domestic seed infringement occurs from time to time, and a seed has many different names, which makes it impossible for farmers to distinguish." Guo Yangdong, a professor at the School of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, pointed out.

Guo Yangdong told the China Science Daily that the problem lies more in some breeding units. Seed breeding often entrusts a professional seed breeding company, during which this company resells the seed parents to other companies, or allows other companies to participate in seed breeding. The breeding seeds may be sold under this name, or they may have different names, and farmers cannot tell.

"the seed Law stipulates that major crop varieties can only be popularized after examination and approval. Many seed enterprises play the trick of 'new wine in old bottles'. Their own enterprises used to have a variety that has been approved and can be promoted legally, but now there are new varieties, but without examination and approval, if they cannot be promoted, they may use the original name to promote new varieties, which is actually an act of counterfeiting and selling counterfeits." Wang Haichao said.

"with the decrease in the number of seed enterprises and varieties, seed producers are more concentrated in seed-producing areas, while problems arise in seed sales areas, which are more difficult to deal with." Wang Haichao said that for example, the sampling test of the Ministry of Agriculture in Hanzhong City found that some varieties were fake seeds, but the seed producers were outside the province and it was difficult to deal with them.

Industry experts also said that if these regional seed market problems are not fundamentally solved, it will not only seriously restrict the independent innovation of the seed industry, but also affect the development of agricultural modernization.

Seed testing is very promising.

China is in a new historical stage of transformation from traditional seed industry to modern seed industry, and from a big seed country to a powerful seed industry. The development opportunities and challenges faced by seed testing are unprecedented. Experts say that the overall situation is that the opportunities outweigh the challenges.

"A relatively perfect seed examination and testing system has been established in China. Taking Beijing as an example, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Agriculture has set up a seed management station, which is specifically responsible for the management and supervision of crop seeds in Beijing." Guo Yangdong introduced.

It is understood that seed testing is the use of scientific, advanced and standard methods to detect, analyze and identify the quality of seed samples, including variety authenticity testing, variety purity identification and other indicators.

For example, the Ministry of Agriculture stipulates that the variety authenticity testing of seed samples sampled by the Ministry of Agriculture shall be undertaken by qualified inspection institutions uniformly arranged by the National crop seed quality Supervision, Inspection and testing Center. Provincial sampling samples of the variety authenticity testing, self-testing with testing ability, those without testing ability can choose other qualified inspection institutions for testing.