Improvements in seed industry breeding greater development

At the 2024 China Seed (Nanfan Agricultural Silicon Valley) Congress recently held in Sanya, Hainan province, the Smart Nanfan Contract Research Organization comprehensive service platform was launched, focusing on the breeding needs of local crop breeding companies and research entities and effectively bolstering the high-quality development of the country's seed industry.

Integrating research, production, sales, communication and technological achievement transformation, the smart CRO platform is designed to gather seed resources in the regions of Sanya, Ledong and Lingshui in South China's Hainan province, and provides breeding companies and research units with onestop online services such as site selection, labor, agricultural machinery, inspection, testing and equipment procurement.

Nanfan — which literally means "breeding in the south" — is a crop breeding practice that takes advantage of the warm winter and spring climate in the southern part of Hainan Island and other southern regions of China, where crops planted in the summer in northern regions are replanted for one or two seasons during the winter and spring in the south.

The Nanfan Scientific and Research Breeding Base in the southern Hainan city of Sanya, which is also known as Nanfan Agricultural Silicon Valley, is a critical part of the Nanfan breeding research program in China. It is a part of the Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City in Sanya.

According to the data from the Nanfan management bureau of Hainan, in recent years, more than 800 agricultural sci-tech experts and scholars from 800-plus research institutes, universities and technology-based enterprises in nearly 30 provinces across the country have come to Hainan to engage in Nanfan breeding research. This has brought new demands for seed breeding research services, leading to the emergence of the Nanfan CRO platform.

"We are trying to design a new path for the industry, and lay down a solid foundation for enterprises' development," said Peng Guihua, head of the research and development department at the management bureau of the Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City.

"The CRO model in the seed industry can more effectively vitalize the existing breeding technology resources, lower the entry barriers for experts and small and medium-sized enterprises, stimulate the vitality of different innovation entities, help to expand the breeding industry, and improve the efficiency of the research, development and production of new and good varieties," Peng added.

CRO is originally used in the pharmaceutical industry for drug research and development. In 2021, the Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City initiated the exploration and industrial cultivation of the CRO model in the seed industry and carried out a series of work such as building platforms, establishing alliances and setting standards, leading the country in launching a seed industry CRO format that covers the entire breeding process.

In recent years, the Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City has established the Yazhou District Agricultural Big Data Platform, Nanfan Shared Land Service Platform, Science and Agriculture Service Platform, and Research Instrument Appointment and Sharing Platform, providing great convenience for the laboratory research and field breeding of crop breeding research entities. As research entities continue to gather, the smart Nanfan CRO platform is set to meet the increasingly diversified demands of more agricultural companies and breeding researchers.

Currently, the Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City is home to more than 50 entities offering seed industry CRO services, 11 of which have been recognized as provincial-level seed industry CRO organizations in Hainan.

Peng noted that in the future, the seed industry CRO model will focus on advancing cutting-edge breeding technology research and standardization services.

The Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City has also led the country in formulating the management measures for the recognition of seed industry CRO organizations such as the Implementation Plan for the Development of the Seed Industry CRO Model in Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City, Sanya, the first special plan in China to promote the seed industry CRO work, and the Management Measures for the Recognition of the CRO in the Seed Industry in Hainan Province.

Other key policies include Ten Measures to Promote the High-Quality Development of the Seed Industry in the Nanfan Scientific and Research Breeding Base, supporting enterprises in conducting inspection and testing services and providing subsidies to encourage technical cooperation between enterprises and research institutes, as well as the Enterprise Service Voucher Management Measures, offering subsidies to enterprises for the purchase of services such as intellectual property, inspection and testing.