Elderly woman caught running off with experimental corn; others questioned

After a crop of test corn valued at 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) was stolen from Hunan Agricultural University, the head of the school's publicity department said on Tuesday that the school will work with the local government to enhance security and educate the public about the value of scientific fieldwork.

On Saturday afternoon, about one-third of the crop from a 0.13-hectare cornfield at the school's agricultural test field in Yanxi, northeastern Hunan province, was stolen. The lost corn included 1,725 samples of a new variety that was being used for educational and research purposes, Liu Qiding, head of the publicity department of the university, said in an interview.

Local police are searching surrounding towns and villages to recover the corn, the Yanxi government said online on Monday. So far, around 100 corncobs have been returned, and there are no signs the corn is being sold, it said.

The Yanxi police said four suspects - female residents between the ages of 60 and 80 - have been questioned.

"The culprits are old so they may not be familiar with laws or the significance of the scientific fieldwork," Liu said.

"Farmers are a vulnerable group in our society, and we hope this incident will have a silver lining," he said.

Faculty members at the university told local Xiaoxiang Morning Paper that most of the corn thieves were older than 50, and when a teacher arrived to stop them, they fled the scene on electric scooters and tricycles loaded with sacks of corn.

An 80-year-old woman tried to escape on foot while carrying around 5 kilograms of the crop. She was pursued and caught by students and returned the stolen corn after police arrived.

The university's agriculture test field is a 53-hectare site for planting corn, cotton, peanuts and rice. The school has reported petty crop thefts from time to time since planting began in 2011.

The last case involved a cotton theft in May, a professor surnamed Chen told Beijing Youth Daily.

The school has installed cameras and planted vegetation around the test field as a natural barrier. It is asking students to patrol the fields when they are free, he added. However, the corn theft happened during examination month, so no students were available, and some of the cameras had gone missing.

The local government will help the university enhance its security measures, including better surveillance, patrols around the test fields and educating the public about the law and science.

At the same time, the university will reduce the impact of this incident on the research and graduation process of its faculty and students, Liu from the university said. For example, it will allow one of its students to change experiments proposed for a thesis, since it had relied heavily on data from the stolen corn. Without a change, the student's graduation would be held up.

The research team behind the corn will also speed up its patent application process to protect their intellectual property rights, Chen told Beijing Youth Daily.

Chen said the stolen corn had recently been approved by the province's agricultural commission and was awaiting patent approval. If the corn's secrets are leaked, research worth about 10-million-yuan will be lost, he said.