Summary: China's National Rice Research
Institute is looking to tap into seed markets in Southeast Asia, Africa and
South America as it promotes its hybrid rice varieties over the next five
years.
*News
on China Daily.
Source: Bing
On 8 Jan., 2016, Cheng Shihua, director
general of the China's National Rice Research Institute, said China will
promote its hybrid rice seeds in emerging markets in Southeast Asia, Africa and
South America over the next five years. Development of local rice varieties
overseas will help China improve its own rice research, as it will help enrich
its rice gene pool.
The Hangzhou-based institute, which
emphasizes genetic studies of rice and genome research for improving rice
yields, grain quality, pest resistance and stress tolerance, is set to launch a
joint venture seed company in Indonesia to develop new hybrid rice varieties
for farmers.
"We have conducted a number of tests
on new rice varieties in rice paddies overseas. More often than not, our
hybrids produce 30 percent higher yields than local varieties," said
Cheng. The institute will partner with Chinese seed companies to promote its
technology overseas. "We need to ensure that rice companies make profits
and that local farmers improve their yields," he said.
During the 13th Five-year Plan period
(2016-2020), the institute will go further than simply setting up demonstration
centers for Chinese technologies, according to Cheng. "We need to
establish ourselves in the local seed markets, and this will offer us a
starting point to establish ourselves further in the agricultural sector,"
he added.
The cost to export Chinese rice seeds to
foreign markets remains high, so the institute wants to develop local rice
varieties overseas with a local labor force. The concept must go through a very
complicated administrative approval procedure from the Ministry of Agriculture.
and it is expected that the approval procedure will be simplified in the near
future.
Hu Peisong, deputy director general of the
institute and a researcher in rice genetic studies and genome research, said
the country still lags behind other major rice-producing countries in the world
in terms of improving grain quality. He said the institute will put more focus
on the improvement of rice quality over the next five years in order to meet
the nation's growing demand. International academic exchanges with Southeast
Asia and India are also getting more frequent, and that will help the country
improve its rice quality as well.
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