Correspondent Li Weihong and Jia Qiyan.
Reporter Liu Hao.
In the sugarcane forest, sugarcane combine harvesters shuttle back and forth, cutting, peeling, cutting, and loading ......In the middle of winter, China's "sugar jar" Guangxi ushered in the crushing season.
On December 14, 2023, the general secretary inspected the high-quality "double high" sugar cane base in Huang'an, National Modern Agricultural Industrial Park, Laibin City. The sugarcane varieties independently bred in Guangxi have high sugar, high yield and wide adaptability, and the planting area of "Guitang No. 42" and "Guiliu 05136" is among the best in the country. **The general secretary affirmed this: "The sugarcane varieties we have selected and bred ourselves have become excellent varieties, and there are corresponding machine harvesting technologies, and you have contributed to the development of the national sugar industry!" ”
Among them, Wang Lunwang and Lu Wenxiang, scientists who presided over the selection and breeding of two sugarcane varieties of "Guitang 42" and "Guiliu 05136" respectively, came from the laboratory led by Guangxi University and jointly built by South China Agricultural University and Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
As a university whose discipline construction covers the whole industrial chain of sugarcane and sugar industry, the laboratory led by Guangxi University focuses on the research of first-class crop germplasm innovation and sugarcane biological breeding, supports and leads the self-reliance, self-improvement and innovative development of sugarcane, lychee and high-quality rice biological breeding in South China, and continues to contribute scientific and technological strength to ensure the security of sugar, fruit and grain supply in China.
Create the history of "Guizihao".
Guangxi is the country's largest sugarcane producing area and sugar production base. Since 1992, Guangxi's sugarcane planting area has been stable at more than 11 million mu, and the annual output of cane sugar has stabilized at more than 6 million tons, accounting for 60% of the country's total output.
However, sugar, a strategic material that affects the development of many industries such as food, medicine and chemical industry, is still facing the problem of stable and safe supply in China.
Seeds are the 'chips' of agriculture. Cultivating high-quality varieties and increasing the yield and sugar content per unit planting area of sugarcane is the best way to solve this 'stuck neck' problem. Zhang Jisen, leader of the sugarcane germplasm innovation and biological breeding team of Guangxi University, said.
The optimal traits were selected from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of sugarseed seedlings, and then compared with other hybrid combinations ......Repeatedly, continuous experimentation, it takes more than 10 years to breed a sugarcane variety. Lu Wenxiang said with emotion.
For more than 70 years, "Guitang" and "Taiwan Sugar" have been "chasing me" on the track of China's main sugarcane varieties. Since 1989, "Guitang No. 11" has been promoted in Guangxi sugarcane area with an area exceeding "Taiwan Sugar 134", and has quickly become the second generation of main varieties, with a cumulative promotion area of 60 million mu. Since 2018, "Guitang 42" and "Guiliu 05136" have replaced "Xintaitang 22" as the main varieties in China.
These three sugarcane "Guizihao" varieties have achieved major breakthroughs in the performance of high yield, high sugar and high disease resistance, and have gone from Guangxi, the country's largest sugarcane breeding base and healthy seedling breeding and promotion center, to all parts of the motherland and rooted in the vast fields.
Step into the world's leading ranks.
Sugarcane is a polyploid crop with a highly complex genetic background, and its narrow genetic background limitations have led to great breakthroughs in sugarcane breeding in terms of yield, sugar content and resistance.
Genomics is an important basic research tool for the upgrading of sugarcane biological breeding. Zhang Jisen, who has been engaged in sugarcane genomics and molecular breeding research for a long time, said that it is necessary to strengthen the application of genomics and biotechnology, and continue to explore the way to upgrade new sugarcane varieties in China.
Zhang Jisen led the team to complete the whole genome profile of sugarcane core materials for the first time in the world, and analyzed the genome characteristics of sugarcane, leading the basic research of sugarcane into the genomic era. For the first time, the germplasm genetic evolution process of sugarcane fine-stemmed wild species was comprehensively analyzed, which laid an important theoretical foundation for de novo hybrid breeding of sugarcane. This series of breakthrough research results have been published in international journals such as Nature Genetics.
Sugarcane breeding is about 'standing up to the sky'. Scientific research should reach the sky and explore to the most cutting-edge; Variety cultivation should be established and the quality of seeds should be tested with actual results. Professor Chen Baoshan, one of the main leaders of the sugarcane team in the laboratory, said.
In the past five years, the number of sugarcane-related products, the number of citations and the number of highly cited products published by the laboratory are all at the international leading level, and it has entered the global advanced ranks in terms of sugarcane genome decipherment, regulation of important yield traits, analysis of pathogenic mechanisms of important diseases, and breeding of high sugar and high resistance.
Run out of biological breeding acceleration.
At present, the global agricultural biotechnology is iteratively upgraded, and the competition in biological breeding is intensifying. In order to win the battle of turning over the seed industry, Guangxi University is accelerating in the track of biological breeding.
In 2011, Guangxi University and South China Agricultural University joined forces to build a laboratory around the protection and utilization of agricultural biological resources in the first belt. In recent years, the laboratory has added the Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences as a co-construction unit, integrating the advantages of "two schools and one college", focusing on the first-class belt crop germplasm innovation and sugarcane biological breeding and recombination laboratory.
Laboratory 410,000 square meters of experimental buildings, more than 5,000 sets of instruments and equipment, 42 breeding bases, 270,000 acres of scientific research land to provide "hard" support for high-level scientific and technological innovation; With "1+5+10" (1 chief scientist, 5 academic leaders, and 10 academic backbones), we have carried out a new paradigm of flexible talent introduction cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and introduced outstanding young talents in the field of sugarcane basic research such as Zhang Qing, Xu Qiutao, Li Baoqi, and Wang Tianyou, so as to continuously consolidate the soft power of breeding and scientific research.
The time for the iteration of new biological technologies is getting shorter and shorter, and we must run out of acceleration and catch up to achieve the leapfrog development of biological breeding in China. Liu Yaoguang, deputy director of the laboratory and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said.