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New cotton strain to raise output by 25%
By Zhao Huanxin (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-09-19 05:48
A major cotton breeding breakthrough has made China the first country in the
world to commercialize a cotton strain that can resist bollworms and increase
output by 25 per cent.
Guo Sandui poses
with his cotton strain in this file photo.
[Net] | The milestone advancement was pioneered by
scientist Guo Sandui and his team at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural
Sciences. The breakthrough won wide acclaim from officials and experts over the
weekend.
Building on his success of insect-resistant, genetically-modified cotton, of
which 2.3 million hectares was planted this year, Guo's research team in 1999
started to work out a molecular breeding system for hybrid cotton.
After years of hard work, Guo, the "father of Chinese Bt transgenetic
cotton," was able to have his "Yinmian 2" cotton strain approved by the National
Crop Cultivar Assessment Committee, which gave the go-ahead for its
commercialization, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
The "three-line hybrid cotton with insect-resistant gene," if planted on the
3.33 million hectares of land where it is fit to grow, will theoretically
increase output by 1 million tons each year.
That amounts to what conventional strains may be able to yield on 666,600
hectares, which is the equivalent size of all the cotton fields in the Yangtze
River Delta, a leading cotton producer in China, Vice-Minister of Agriculture
Fan Xiaojian said on Saturday.
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