It was just the time for farming and seeding in spring when the centralized seedling raising workshop in Feishan Modern Agricultural Industrial Park of the Miao & Dong Autonomous County of Jingzhou (known as the national seed production county) is bustling. The three-dimensional circulating seedling raising equipment here realizes the mechanization of the whole process from a seed to a seedling. “one batch of raising seedlings can be used in 5,000 mu (333.33 hectares) of rice fields, and four batches of seedlings can be raised in spring,” said Li Qiaohua, the person in charge of the workshop.
As the birthplace of hybrid rice in the world and one of the three major hybrid rice seed production bases in China, Huaihua Municipality strives to build a regional innovation center for seed industry, aiming to develop itself into the “Capital of International seed Industry” , and works to include the industrial chain of modern seed industry into the new “5 plus N”system of modern industry. The municipal finance arranges dedicated funds of 15 million CNY for the revitalization of the seed industry every year, focusing on supporting the protection and utilization of germplasm resources and the construction of seed industry bases. In July 2023, Yuelu Mountain Seed Industrial Innovation Center Great Xiangxi (West part of Hunan) Regional Center was unveiled in Huaihua. At present, the city is home to 15 seed production and breeding platforms, such as the Huaihua National Agricultural Science and Technology Park and the Huaihua Branch Center of the National Hybrid Rice Engineering Research Center, of which 5 are at the national level and 6 at the provincial level. Huaihua Municipality dares to crack the hard nut on the issue of “bottleneck” in the seed industry and develop a number of new technologies with independent intellectual property rights. In recent years, Huaihua Municipality has focused on tackling key problems in hybrid rice with high quality and high resistance, perennials and characteristic functions, and cultivated more than 30, 000 new sterile line materials and more than 1,100 new combinations, such as “Gluten S” and “Yuhuai S”.
We will work to carry out the strategy of “bringing in” and “going out” in developing the seed industry, aiming to turn the advantages of the seed industry into the ones of industrial development. In 2023, the total output value of modern seed industry chain in Huaihuareached 8.93 billion CNY. The seed industry enterprises like Hunan Zhonglang, Shenzhen Zhaonong and others have settled in Huaihua, and the number of hybrid rice seed production enterprises in Huaihua reached 53. Huaihua Daily Food Technology Co., Ltd cooperates with Asian Potash, Hunan OPULENT Technology Co., Ltd. and Huaihua Agriculture and Forestry Group, which helps to promote the construction of a 10,000-mu (666.67 hectares) rice base in Laos. By the end of last year, Laos had got a bumper harvest of 1,500 mu (100 hectares) of hybrid rice. “The hybrid rice seeds sown in Laos are provided by our company,” said the person in charge of Hunan OPULENT Technology Co., Ltd., and in the next three years, hybrid rice in Laos will be extended to 30,000 mu (2,000 hectares).
To develop itself into “the Capital of the International Seed Industry”, Huaihua Municipality stay committed to the strategy of “One Stem and Multiple Branches”, viz., hybrid rice seed production is given a priority while traditional Chinese medicine, fruit, livestock and poultry aquatic products, forest and other seed industries are developed simultaneously. Nowadays, the seed production area for perennial hybrid rice in Huaihua is more than 140,000 mu (9333.33 hectares), and the seed production area and yield account for 3% of the whole Hunan province and 10% of the whole country, ranking first in the province. There are 828 kinds of germplasm resources such as food crops, cash crops, fruits and vegetables and forages registered in the city. There are 2,340 kinds of traditional Chinese medicine resources, ranking second in the country.
（Translated by Yang Sigui）