High yield is not the only goal of breeding

At the time of "eleven consecutive increases" in grain production, the role of seeds in national food security has become increasingly prominent. With the development of science and technology, the innovation and upgrading of excellent varieties directly promote the annual increase of grain yield per mu. Therefore, for a long time, the high-yielding characteristics of seeds have been the dream of breeders.

Among many characters of seeds, some can not be balanced, if too much pursuit of extreme high yield, other beneficial characters are likely to be ignored and sacrificed. In recent years, some varieties have been approved because of their outstanding yield performance, but their resistance is weak, such as wheat varieties that are not cold resistant, corn varieties that are not resistant to lodging, rice varieties that are not resistant to disease, etc. These varieties in the actual production application, such as encounter related disease outbreak, bad weather and other extreme conditions, it is easy to lead to yield reduction or no harvest.

Liu Shi, a visiting professor at China Agricultural University, believes that the current agricultural production is no longer the traditional agricultural production that only pursues output, but the promotion of comprehensive efficiency and benefit. How can agriculture continue to grow if its returns are much lower than those of other industries?"

Indeed, with the development of economy and society, the changes in agricultural and rural organization forms and production methods have brought new problems to grain production, and the changes in consumption demand and grain use have also put forward new requirements for grain production.

For example, in the main body of grain cultivation, large grain growers have gradually become a force that cannot be ignored. Their demand for variety characteristics is different from that of small farmers. The impact of disaster reduction on small farmers is far lower than that of large grain growers when hundreds of mu of land fail to harvest. In the interview, the author felt that the large households had poorer tolerance to risks and higher requirements for stable yield. Many large households hoped to plant varieties with relatively stable yield such as lodging resistance, disease and insect resistance, drought resistance and wind resistance. Especially wheat, blindly pursuing high-yield varieties and neglecting lodging resistance will not only cause yield loss, but also make it difficult to harvest lodging wheat by machinery, thus increasing manual harvesting cost. In this case, lodging resistance is the first index of seed selection for large households, and then yield benefit.

Suitable for mechanized harvesting is also a new variety characteristic demand generated with the rise of large grain growers and the improvement of mechanization level. In this year's corn harvest period,"Jingke 968" and other varieties suitable for direct corn grain harvesting have received attention from all aspects and are considered to be a major change in corn production. Changing "corn cob harvesting" to "corn kernel harvesting" will save labor and money enough to make up for the benefit gap between many large grain growers, especially farmers who often go to the northeast to pay attention to high-yield varieties.

In addition, excellent taste has become an increasingly important indicator. With the improvement of living standards, people are more and more picky about "eating well" and have higher and higher requirements. Jingxi rice, rice flower fragrance and other varieties with "old taste" and good quality, but almost eliminated due to low yield, are re-sought after and sold at good prices. Therefore, they are welcomed by farmers.

In the high-yield and high-resistance, mechanization, high-quality and other different varieties of traits, how to differentiate breeding, balanced breeding, or need to breeding technology to find a way out, at the same time, in the variety approval also need to establish a diversified index system, but at present, according to Huazhong Agricultural University professor, potato breeding expert Xie Conghua said, At present basically is the yield "One vote veto", Not conducive to the specificity of varieties. He believes that relevant indicators should be modified, not to increase production as the only goal, flat yield but outstanding resistance or quality, good market prospects, should be a good variety.

Liu Shi also believes that extreme yield should not be pursued in breeding. He believes that agricultural production should pursue high yield on the basis of stable yield. Blind pursuit of extreme yield will bring great risks to farmers. Due to changes in environmental climate and even pests, fluctuations in production are a blow to farmers 'income, market capacity, prices and consumers. In addition, blind pursuit of maximum output will lead to lower marginal benefits of input and output.

For enterprises, how to determine breeding needs differently, enterprises can make good use of local environment and farmers 'needs, and should obtain breeding direction information on the front line. A variety has one or more kinds of resistance, if it can not be used in the right place, it will often lead to the characteristics can not be very good to play out, in this case, the phenomenon of yield reduction, often can not be said that the seed is not good, but "good steel is not used on the blade."