Industrial Cluster: Integration Of Industry, University And Research To Improve Innovation Ability, Aiming At Industrial Demand Breeding

At present, the cotton harvest in Xinjiang has been completed, and a lot of good news has come from the north and south of Tianshan——

The high-yield demonstration field of "100 mu key problem tackling, 1000 mu establishment and 10000 mu demonstration" jointly carried out by Xinjiang's cotton industry technology system and the national cotton industry technology system set three national records of coordinated improvement in output and quality with 769 kg, 636 kg and 564 kg per mu respectively, and fiber quality reached more than 30%, achieving coordinated improvement in quantity and quality;

The 100 mu cotton high-yield demonstration field in Jinghe County has set the national record of high-yield cotton harvested by machine with a yield of 743.6 kg of seed cotton per mu;

The 100000 mu cotton high-yield demonstration field in Shawan City has set the national cotton high-yield record by producing 586.4 kg of seed cotton per mu;

Aksu cotton high-yield demonstration field reached a new high of 648.8 kg seed cotton per mu;

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Seed is the foundation of agricultural modernization. Behind the high yield and high quality of cotton, in addition to the supporting advanced cultivation and management technology, cotton breeding technology innovation is indispensable.

Breeding aiming at industrial demand

"Varieties contribute more than 35% to the high yield of cotton and play a decisive role in improving quality," said Li Xueyuan, chief expert of Xinjiang cotton industry technology system and researcher of Economic Crops Research Institute of Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

In the past 30 years, Li Xueyuan led the team to cultivate more than 20 multi-functional cotton varieties, many of which have filled the gap of Xinjiang cotton varieties, among which Xinluzhong 78 and Yuanmian 8 have become the leading varieties in the local area.

For a long time, Xinjiang cotton breeding objectives are mainly early maturity, high and stable yield, disease resistance, insect resistance and high quality. With the continuous improvement of mechanization level, breeding experts have begun to actively cultivate varieties suitable for mechanical harvesting, and in the future, it is also necessary to select cotton oil feed varieties.

The world cotton sees China, and the Chinese cotton sees Xinjiang. The total cotton output of Xinjiang has been stable at more than 5 million tons for five consecutive years, and its planting area and total output have ranked first in China for 30 consecutive years.

The output has increased year after year, but it also faces new problems. For a period of time, cotton focused on yield rather than quality, and it was difficult to improve the yield and quality in coordination. High cotton planting costs and declining benefits seriously affected the development of Xinjiang's cotton industry.

In response to these problems, Li Xueyuan led the team to select a breakthrough cotton variety, Yuanmian 8. This variety has excellent comprehensive performance, integrates early maturity, high yield, disease resistance, high quality, mechanical harvesting and other excellent traits, and achieves the national record of synergetic improvement of cotton quality and quantity in the creation of "one hundred million" high-yield demonstration fields in Xinjiang's cotton industry technology system.

Li Xueyuan introduced that Xinjiang has the basic advantages of heat, light and other basic advantages of cotton yield increase in a large area. The large-scale, mechanized, standardized and intelligent production mode also provides production guarantee for the increase of cotton yield in a large area. The increase of cotton yield in a large area should focus on increasing the number and weight of bolls per mu, which is the main goal of breeding experts to select new varieties.

Industry university research integration improves innovation ability

In recent years, Xinjiang seed industry enterprises and scientific research institutes have joined hands, from collecting cotton germplasm resources and jointly cultivating new varieties to jointly building a breeding innovation platform, and concentrated their advantages to overcome the key "choke" problem in variety breeding, so as to continuously improve Xinjiang cotton variety breeding ability.

Take Xinjiang Jinfengyuan Seed Industry Co., Ltd. as an example, which is a leading agricultural industrialization enterprise integrating crop seed breeding, reproduction and promotion. "With the adjustment of the national cotton storage policy, the textile mill's demand for high-quality raw cotton is more urgent. Therefore, cultivating higher quality cotton varieties is also the unremitting pursuit of breeding enterprises." Liu Jun, deputy director of the company's research and development center, introduced that the company has cooperated with the Autonomous Region Academy of Agricultural Sciences for more than 10 years to jointly cultivate three new cotton varieties, with a promotion area of more than 3 million mu.

Up to now, Xinjiang Jinfengyuan Seed Industry Co., Ltd. has not only led the establishment of the Xinjiang "New Silk Road" transgenic insect resistant cotton test consortium, but also jointly established three cotton breeding innovation platforms with scientific research institutions, namely, the National Science and Technology Innovation Alliance for Cotton Biological Breeding Industry, the Joint Research Center for Cotton Biological Breeding, and the Zhejiang Arab Cotton Biological Breeding Innovation Center, The purpose is to promote the smooth transformation of scientific research achievements, cultivate a group of local cotton scientific researchers with high quality, strong ability and specialization, and enhance the competitiveness of local cotton breeding.

Scientific research units and enterprises work together, and relevant departments also actively guide. In 2022, under the leadership of the Autonomous Region Cotton Association, Xinjiang will for the first time face 11 cotton planting fields (prefectures and cities), 38 cotton planting counties (cities), and 45 ecological regions in the whole region, and recommend 35 main cotton varieties that give consideration to both quality and yield and meet the planting wishes of local cotton farmers, including 15 in the north, 4 in the east, and 16 in the south.

"Xinjiang has a vast cotton planting area and a complex and diverse environment, so it is very important to cultivate high-quality cotton varieties that meet the characteristics of Xinjiang's climate resources for the high-quality development of the cotton industry," said Su Xuhong, secretary-general of the Xinjiang Cotton Association, "Through fair and scientific screening and comparison, we put forward recommendations and recommended planting one main variety and two auxiliary varieties in the same ecological area, namely, 'one main variety and two auxiliary varieties' cotton varieties, aiming to better solve the problem of multiple cotton varieties in our region, improve the consistency of raw cotton quality and improve the cotton quality in our region."

Through the joint efforts of various departments, Xinjiang's cotton breeding innovation ability has been constantly improved. Up to now, the main cotton varieties are mainly local varieties, accounting for more than 90%. Xinjiang has become the largest cotton seed production base in China, and the cotton seed processing level has reached the international leading level.

Solve key technical problems

At present, the main cotton varieties in Xinjiang and the varieties to be popularized in large areas have good comprehensive performance, high yield, high quality and other characteristics, but the stress resistance and other aspects need to be further improved.

The stress resistance of plants refers to the characteristics of plants that are resistant to low temperature and cold damage, high temperature, drought, salinity, pests, weeds and other adverse environments. Research shows that the excellent stress resistance of plants is difficult to be transferred to other plants under natural conditions. It is necessary to introduce excellent genes into other crops by means of biological breeding technologies such as genetic engineering improvement, so as to improve stress resistance.

In the context of global warming, extreme weather and climate events occur frequently, so it is more urgent to improve the resistance of Xinjiang cotton varieties.

In February 2023, the National Science and Technology Innovation Alliance for Cotton Biological Breeding Industry was inaugurated. The Alliance aims to integrate the whole industry chain resources of cotton such as advantageous scientific research institutes, seed industry and cotton leading enterprises nationwide, and carry out precision breeding with the help of key technologies such as genetic engineering and all factor design breeding, guided by industrial demand, Promote scientific and technological innovation in China's cotton industry.

Moreover, in order to solve the key technical problems faced by cotton breeding, Xinjiang has launched a number of major scientific research projects in the field of cotton breeding. For example, "Analysis of major agronomic traits of cotton varieties and molecular design breeding". For the first time, the project takes scientific research institutions as the issuers, and issues the list to national scientific research institutions. It organizes advantageous teams to jointly tackle key problems, analyzes the important agronomic traits of the varieties around Yuanmian 8 and other varieties, carries out variety improvement, improves the lint percentage and stress resistance of the varieties, and provides technical support for the stable production and supply, quality and efficiency improvement, and green and sustainable development of Xinjiang cotton industry.

"Biological breeding can promote the transformation of experience breeding to intelligent design breeding, effectively shorten the breeding cycle, and enable breeding technology to develop accurately and intelligently." Li Xueyuan said, "But how to ensure that the imported excellent genes can maintain the stability of characters is still the focus and difficulty we should pay attention to."

Xinjiang also faces some challenges in developing biological breeding technology, such as the lack of systematic research on the genetic basis and regulatory network for the formation of important cotton traits, and insufficient mining of major genes such as high-yield, high-quality, disease and insect resistance, drought tolerance, etc. Li Xueyuan believes that it is necessary to further strengthen the collection, protection, identification of cotton germplasm resources and the creation of breeding materials, and analyze the formation and evolution of excellent germplasm resources. At the same time, we will deepen the research on breeding theory and methods, continue to promote the innovation of key technologies in biological breeding, truly play the key role of seed industry as an agricultural "chip", and help the industry achieve higher quality development. (Reporter Xie Huibian)

(Source: Tianshan.com Xinjiang Daily)