A view of Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City in Sanya, South China’s Hainan Province on December 9, 2025 Photo: VCG
Under the tropical solar at 18 levels north of the equator, a patch of salt-tolerant rice crops drinks in daylight and sea breeze in an experimental plot contained in the Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City.
On simply 23.54 sq. kilometers of land beside the deep sea off the southwestern Sanya in South China Hainan Province, a compact excessive‑tech park has quietly grow to be a strategic hub for China’s seed trade and an rising bridgehead for world agricultural cooperation.
In winter, whereas a lot of northern China shivers, soybean breeders right here in Sanya are in full swing. Tian Zhixi, chief scientist of the soybean seed innovation workforce at Yazhou Bay National Laboratory in Sanya, bends over a plot of soybeans flowering for the third time in 2025.
“Most regions in China grows only one season of soybean a year. Growing an extra one or two seasons in Hainan drastically accelerates the breeding process,” Tian stated. “That is the speed of the Nanfan ‘Silicon Valley’.”
“Nanfan” refers back to the apply of utilizing the nice and cozy southern local weather to develop a number of generations of seeds per 12 months, thereby shortening the breeding cycle. Built on that legacy, the breeding bases in Hainan have advanced into what researchers and trade leaders now name the Nanfan “Silicon Valley.”
Tian’s workforce has already developed greater than a dozen high-yield, high-quality soybean varieties because it hunts for the “genetic codes” that can enhance China’s soybean yields towards these of world counterparts such because the United States and Brazil.
A seed innovation cluster
Since the inauguration of the Hainan Yazhou Bay Seed Laboratory on the breeding bases on May 12, 2021, a cluster of high analysis institutes and trade leaders, together with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China National Seed Group, and Longping Biotechnology (Hainan) Co, have set down roots. Together they’ve fashioned a collaborative ecosystem for breeding innovation, bringing superior instruments, expertise and funding to the sector, the Xinhua News Agency reported. Longping Biotechnology is known as after China’s “Father of Hybrid Rice” Yuan Longping.
Thanks to the distinctive pure circumstances and favorable insurance policies below the Hainan Free Trade Port (FTP), the cluster has attracted greater than 20 seed academicians, gathered over 2,800 revolutionary enterprises, and generated annual industrial output in extra of 18 billion yuan (about $2.5 billion). It has performed a vital position in safeguarding nationwide meals safety, driving to strengthen seed breeding by joint analysis and guaranteeing self-sufficiency in seed sources, and has boosted worldwide cooperation in seed science, in line with the Xinhua report.
Tian is one of the researchers who had flocked to the high-tech park since Hainan started making ready for the island-wide particular customs operations that formally took impact on December 18, 2025. Leveraging Hainan’s distinctive local weather and coverage benefits, Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City has grow to be the nation’s core hub for seed expertise innovation.
“The unique nature of breeding lies in the fact that it requires both technological breakthroughs in the laboratory and experiments in the field,” stated Zhang Xiaoqiang, deputy normal supervisor of China National Seed Group. Since relocating its headquarters to Yazhou Bay in 2021 and collaborating with native analysis groups, the corporate has filed 28 patents, utilized for 12 plant selection rights, and seen 14 discipline crop varieties accepted — the tangible proof of the pace enabled by the Nanfan mannequin.
The growth of China National Seed Group is a microcosm of the continual innovation of Chinese seed firms pushed by the seed trade vitalization marketing campaign. Zhang stated that, guided by the seed trade vitalization marketing campaign, FTP insurance policies will create a excessive floor for the open cooperation within the seed trade, improve the worldwide competitiveness of China’s seed trade, and contribute to the sustainable growth of the worldwide agriculture.
Researchers conduct analysis at a laboratory of Longping Biotechnology (Hainan) Co in Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City in Sanya on December 9, 2025. Photo: VCG
Policies below Hainan FTP
Policy improvements tied to the Hainan FTP have performed a major position. Hainan’s island‑broad particular customs operations have turned the province right into a logistics and regulatory take a look at mattress for accelerated germplasm exchanges.
Simplified procedures for importing and transiting germplasm, quick‑monitor approvals for incoming propagation supplies, fast customs clearance and exemptions from routine sampling have made it simpler for world‑class genetic sources to stream into China’s breeding pipelines. These measures are accelerating worldwide exchanges and cooperation in seed science, in line with a notice despatched to the Global Times by the Nanfan Offshore Science and Technology Innovation Center for Global Animal and Plant Germplasm Resources.
“High-level opening-up is written into the Hainan FTP’s DNA,” an official from the provincial agriculture division instructed the Global Times. “For the seed industry, it means every new gene developed here can reach global fields faster and at lower cost.”
Those coverage measures have helped speed up Hainan’s transformation into a world middle for tropical agriculture and a bridgehead for China’s agricultural opening-up.
Boshou Seed Industry’s consultant Zhang Xiaosheng describes Nanfan as an “accelerator” and Hainan’s free commerce port as a “launch pad.” Relying on the development of the Nanfan “Silicon Valley” of China’s seed trade, Boshou Seed Industry has established a department in Hainan, breeding tomato and pepper varieties that meet the wants of the Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian international locations.
He stated that using the wave of the development of the Hainan FTP, the corporate can also be gaining extra cooperation alternatives by an rising quantity of change and cooperation platforms.
Export procedures that when took six to eight weeks have been compressed to 10 working days below the island-wide particular customs operations insurance policies, a radical discount that helps flip incubated varieties into exportable merchandise to Belt and Road associate international locations virtually as quick as they’re harvested, he instructed the Global Times.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences headquartered in Haikou has been selling new cassava varieties within the Republic of Congo, considerably rising yields and guaranteeing that extra individuals in Africa have sufficient to eat and eat effectively.
Hainan’s coaching packages have hosted greater than 5,000 trainees from 99 international locations and areas on grain crops, and agricultural demonstration parks such because the Cambodia‑China Tropical Ecological Agriculture Cooperation Demonstration Zone now below building are supposed to translate Hainan’s classes into domestically tailored apply overseas.
Despite these advances, the sector faces persistent challenges. Tian instructed the Global Times that China’s seed trade nonetheless faces under-utilization of germplasm sources, a comparatively small share of imported elite germplasm, restricted breakthrough varietal improvements, and gaps in home-grown breeding instruments, digital tools and authentic algorithms.
Closing these gaps, he stated, would require sustained funding in primary analysis, stronger worldwide collaboration, and insurance policies that encourage two‑manner exchanges moderately than one‑sided switch.
Looking forward, one might say the technique is twofold: to speed up the conversion of breeding positive factors into business varieties and to internationalize Chinese seed innovation, Tian stated.
Policies that assist home seed firms in establishing abroad breeding facilities, conducting localized analysis and constructing world manufacturers will increase the competitiveness. Deeper engagement with worldwide organizations and lively participation in shaping world seed‑trade guidelines will assist be certain that breakthroughs born in Nanfan can journey safely and equitably throughout borders, in line with the Nanfan Offshore Science and Technology Innovation Center for Global Animal and Plant Germplasm Resources.
By combining a singular local weather benefit with concentrated scientific capability and particular customs insurance policies to shorten the trail from gene to discipline, the Nanfan mannequin has created a quick, environment friendly pipeline for agricultural innovation, in line with the high-tech park administration.
Yazhou may even search to move the aptitude evaluation of the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) inside 4 years and grow to be an ISTA member to offer internationally acknowledged testing providers for the import and export of germplasm sources in addition to seeds, the administration stated.