China hopes to breed food security success with quality soybean varieties focus
China completed a census of its agricultural germ plasma resources earlier this year amid a focus on food security
Chinese agricultural scientists are intensifying efforts to breed quality soybean varieties after identifying a number of high oil and high-yield varieties of the crop amid a breeding technology push to ensure food security.
Nearly 10,000 soybean resources were collected during China’s largest-ever agricultural germ plasma census that involved 1.5 million grassroots workers and covered “every corner of the nation”, the Ministry of Agriculture said on Tuesday.
The census collected over 63,000 germ plasma samples for grain crops, with soybeans emerging as a key focus due to China’s status as the crop’s country of origin.
But huge demand from the world’s biggest food consumer has driven China to buy most of the crop, which is a source of food, cooking oil and animal feed, from overseas in the past decades.
[The survey] has laid a robust resource foundation for ensuring national food security
The survey, the third of its type conducted in China since 1949, “has laid a robust resource foundation for ensuring national food security,” said Liu Xu, an academic with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, which led the project.
