SANYA, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) — In Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City in the coastal metropolis of Sanya, south China’s Hainan Province, worldwide communication about seed breeding is commonplace.
Leveraging the coverage benefits of the Hainan Free Trade Port and the island province’s tropical local weather, Hainan is constructing a Nanfan “Silicon Valley,” a worldwide platform for seed {industry} cooperation and an experimental zone for deepening reform and opening up of the seed sector.
Against this background, an growing variety of worldwide college students and overseas agricultural researchers are coming to Hainan to study and work.
In 2024, Felix Dapare Dakora, previous president of the African Academy of Sciences, moved to the Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City and have become the primary full-time overseas breeding scientist there.
Working with Chinese specialists, he’s serving to to develop soybean varieties with excessive nitrogen fixation, which reduces the necessity for nitrogen fertilizers in soybean manufacturing. He can be advancing cooperation tasks underneath the China-Africa Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Alliance and welcoming younger African scientists to review in China.
China as soon as confronted meals shortages, however persistent scientific and technological innovation secured meals provide, he mentioned, including that Hainan’s local weather and agricultural sorts are just like these in components of Africa, and that the open, inclusive analysis surroundings and wealthy innovation assets in Hainan make it particularly appropriate for seed-industry cooperation.
With Dakora’s help, Takele Weldu Gebrewahid, from Ethiopia, got here to the National Nanfan Research Institute underneath the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences to pursue postdoctoral research.
His staff has developed a brand new artificial-intelligence algorithm that makes use of huge information and AI to speed up the event of latest varieties.
Agriculture is one among Ethiopia’s financial pillars, he mentioned, including that China leads in agricultural manufacturing and breeding innovation, and that Ethiopia can draw on China’s expertise to slim the technological hole.
Such worldwide cooperation round seed breeding has yielded appreciable outcomes. For occasion, the Sugarcane Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences has established a extremely environment friendly genetic transformation system for sugarcane and obtained a batch of latest germplasm that’s high-yielding, excessive in sugar content material, insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant. The heart has additionally launched a brand new framework for clever sugarcane breeding that promotes deep integration of conventional breeding with trendy applied sciences.
Of the middle’s greater than 20 researchers, 5 come from Pakistan.
“Pakistani researchers each bring specialized strengths and have made active contributions in different research teams,” mentioned the middle’s director, Que Youxiong. By making use of superior breeding applied sciences, researchers from each nations are pushing selection enchancment to higher sort out shared challenges reminiscent of crop illnesses and local weather change.
Collaboration extends past the laboratory. Batches of improved seeds from Hainan are being despatched all over the world.
At the Nanfan base of China National Seed Group in Sanya, a whole bunch of latest rice varieties are thriving.
“Hainan’s climate and ecology are similar to those of Southeast Asian countries,” mentioned Zhou Hua, the corporate’s rice testing director. “Field trials here help us identify varieties with superior performance that can be exported to Southeast Asia.”
Riding on Hainan’s free commerce port insurance policies, China National Seed Group has exported greater than 100 varieties overseas and is conducting hybrid rice trials and promotion in over 30 nations, together with Vietnam, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The firm has additionally imported greater than 100 tropical fruit and vegetable varieties from all over the world for trial in Hainan, aiming to supply extra various, high-quality agricultural merchandise to the Chinese market.
Against the backdrop of mounting stress on world meals safety brought on by local weather change, useful resource constraints, and geopolitical volatility, from Dec. 7 to 9, the 2025 International Forum on Agriculture Innovation and Sustainability (IFAIS) & The 2nd China-Latin America and the Caribbean Sustainable Food Innovation Forum have been held at Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City.
Experts from greater than 20 nations mentioned matters together with the safety and use of germplasm assets, foundational and technical improvements in the seed {industry}, and industrial purposes.
Santiago Signorelli Póppolo, affiliate professor at Universidad de la República, Uruguay, mentioned that China has superior crop stress resistance applied sciences that Uruguay presently lacks, including that cooperating with China will present nice help for Uruguay’s agricultural growth. ■