On June 28th, in order to systematically summarize the achievements of wheat breeding work in recent years, explore the ideas and measures for continuously strengthening wheat breeding in the new era, further enhance the reputation of university and disciplines, and contribute greater and stronger NWAFU’s strength to ensuring national food security, the university organized a forum on wheat breeding.
Wheat breeding is a key and advantageous discipline of our university. Since its establishment 86 years ago,the university has made great achievements in the field of wheat breeding, which has made major contributions to serving economic and social development and ensuring national food security. It is a beautiful “business card” for the university to serve the national strategy and fulfill its mission.With the efforts of several generations of scientific and educational personnel represented by Zhao Hongzhang, Li Zhensheng, Ning Kun and other scientists of the older generation, before the university's merger, the school has bred 38 wheat varieties suitable for Northern China's winter wheat region, which has been popularized to more than 2 billion mu in the Huang Huai wheat region, increasing the yield of wheat by more than 100 billion kilograms, and boosting four times of wheat regeneration in the Huang Huai wheat region.
Since the merger of the university, after 20 years of development, NWAFU has gradually formed a breeding technology system based on conventional breeding, combining heterosis utilization and modern biotechnology breeding, and has bred a large number of water and dry land breeding, including 17 varieties approved in China and 84 varieties approved by provinces. The green and multi-resistant, high-quality and strong gluten have become the business cards of NWAFU's wheat varieties, and are well-known in China. In the past three years, wheat breeding has achieved fruitful results. “NWAFU 979” won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award; “NWAFU 511” new varieties reached a record high of 4.55 million yuan; 6 varieties were approved by the state in 2020, the highest number of units approved by scientific research institutes of colleges and universities, and 11 varieties have passed the preliminary examination of Shaanxi Province (a total of 23); wheat germplasm resources have increased from 4996 before the university merger to more than 30000 at present; as the only participating unit in China, the wheat genome has been sequenced and was awarded the “the world's top ten Science and Technology Progress News in 2018”.
Translated by: Ruan Shuling
Proofread by: Zhang Xiaorong
