"Sea Rice" excites Chinese rice experts.

"if 1.48 billion mu of saline-alkali land can be planted with rice, thus breaking through the limited cultivated land resource constraints of 1.8 billion mu in our country, it will alleviate the three major crises of human water resources, arable land and food to a great extent." On December 10, more than 100 experts and scholars of sea rice in China, including Chen Risheng, the discoverer of sea rice, gathered in Wuhan to exchange research and application of sea rice and outline the future development of sea rice.

Chen Risheng, the discoverer of sea rice, recalled that in 1986, he followed his teacher to the seaside to inspect mangroves and found wild sea rice with strong alkali tolerance, disease resistance and strong vitality. Since then, he has begun breeding research on this variety, and since 1993, he has taken this kind of rice to all parts of the country for trial planting. It took Chen Risheng 30 years to increase the yield of seawater rice from 50 kg per mu to 150 kg per mu.

Deng Gansheng, chief agronomist of the Hubei Provincial Department of Agriculture, said bluntly that Hubei's agricultural production also needs the excellent genes of sea rice. "after three or four days of flooding, the leaves of sea rice are still green. If this anti-waterlogging gene can be successfully obtained, it will be of great significance to the whole southern region. "

Zhang Kai, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: "the greatest significance and value of sea rice lies in saline-alkali tolerance, the realization of planting on saline-alkali soil, and the expansion of China's rice planting belt is a remarkable contribution." Academician Zhang said that in the field of sea rice research, everyone should strive to do a good job in the hope that in the land of China and in the world, excellent varieties cultivated from sea rice resources discovered by the Chinese can be planted.

Zhu Ying, an expert on hybrid rice, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor of Wuhan University, believes that if the characters of sea rice and China's "red lotus" rice varieties are further combined to achieve hybrid advantage, in the future, a large number of coastal tidal flats and inland saline-alkali land will become food production bases, thus breaking through China's limited cultivated land resource constraints of 1.8 billion mu, which will not only improve China's food supply capacity and ensure national food security. It can also promote agricultural efficiency and increase farmers' income.

Professor Li Xinming from the University of California, Los Angeles, USA reported on the previous systematic molecular biology research on sea rice genome sequencing, transcriptome expression, genetic evolution and so on. Experts from Changjiang University, Qingdao Agricultural University, crop Institute of Tianjin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Coastal Agricultural Research Institute of Hebei Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, and Jingchu seed Industry introduced the research on saline-alkali tolerance threshold of seawater rice, the mechanism of saline-alkali tolerance, the effect of saline-alkali soil improvement and the progress of cross breeding using sea rice.

At the seminar on the research and application of sea rice, the Wuhan Sea Rice Biotechnology Research Institute was officially unveiled, and experts and entrepreneurs joined hands to build a sea rice research platform of "science-enterprise cooperation and cooperation to tackle key problems". (reporter Liu Zhiwei, correspondent Zhu Anan)