With Chinese help, new corn sprouts in Indonesia

Four varieties of corn — also known as maize — developed in Indonesia with help from Chinese experts passed an assessment by a commission of the Ministry of Agriculture of Indonesia. It means the varieties of seeds will be available in the Indonesian market, according to Maize Research Institute of the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

"The newly developed seeds are highly resistant to downy mildew, a disease widely seen on corn in Indonesia," said Ding Zhaohua, a researcher at the institution and one of the team members who worked on developing the seeds.

The assessment found that the average production on each 0.07 hectares (one mu) of field planting IDCHN07, one of the four corn seed varieties newly developed, is a little over 793 kilograms, 8.3 percent more than the current seed variety in wide use in Indonesia. Mu is a unit of land measurement often used in agricultural research in China.

"The experiments have been carried out in several regions of Indonesia with the highest yield reaching 914.51 kilograms per mu," Ding said.

Corn is the second-most important grain for Indonesians after rice. Demand in the country continues to increase, causing the Indonesian government to prioritize production.

As a part of the international technology cooperation between the two countries, experts have been working on developing new corn varieties for more than a decade.

Names of the four varieties all contain the designation IDCHN to commemorate the cooperative achievement between the two countries, Ding said.