"One seed can change a world"

This slogan in the research building of the China Rice Research Institute quietly influenced a young man, Wang Kejian, who was engaged in the research of rice breeding technology here.

Wang Kejian, who was born in 1983, has become the chief scientist of the Genome Editing and apomictic Reproduction team of the Science and technology innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Wang Kejian and his team made the retention of hybrid rice from the impossible to the theoretical possible, from zero to one to overcome the world's "seed problem". He was also awarded the 2020 Tan Kah Kee Youth Science Award, the first time the award has been given to a young scientist in the field of agriculture since its inception.

Standing on the stage of "Youth Say" section of People's Daily online, Wang Kejian faced the camera and said: "If Yuan Longping's wish is to let people get rid of famine, so that people all over the world can have enough to eat, then my wish is to borrow Mr. Yuan Longping's achievements to make the seed production of hybrid rice more simple."

Wang Kejian was born in 1983 in Yancheng, Jiangsu province. Like many rural children, rice paddies are his strongest childhood memories.

"Do I have to live the life of my parents again?" Wang Kejian's dream was to get out of the countryside and live a life away from the dirt. However, it seems that fate deliberately arranged, after the college entrance examination, Wang Kejian was admitted by Yangzhou University agronomy major, and the popular finance, computer and other majors passed by.

Wang Kejian observed the growth of hybrid rice in the field. Chart of Respondents

During an internship in university, Wang Kejian learned the fun of genetics research, and also realized that compared with developed countries, China's agriculture is still very backward, and there are many problems that young people need to study and solve. A dormant enthusiasm was awakened. "I started looking forward to making my own footprint in agriculture, and even back in the field, I could make a contribution and find my value."

After that, through unremitting efforts, Wang Kejian was successfully admitted to the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. After completing his master's and doctoral studies, he stayed in the hospital to work, mainly carrying out research on rice reproduction and development, which laid a solid foundation for the future research on apomictic reproduction.

In 2013, Wang gave up the opportunity to go abroad and joined the China National Rice Research Institute, where the dream of hybrid rice apomixis from zero to one gradually "took root."

Wang Kejian (center) leads a team at a rice transplanting competition organized by the China National Rice Research Institute. Chart of Respondents

Wang Kejian noticed the phenomenon of "expensive seeds" due to the "difficulty in seed production" during field visits and research. That is, although hybrid varieties have many advantages such as high yield and strong stress resistance, their offspring will have characters separation, and the advantages cannot be inherited. After planting, their offspring cannot be kept for the next year. To grow high-yield hybrid rice, new seeds must be purchased every year at a high cost. Conventional rice seeds only cost 3 or 4 yuan a jin, while hybrid rice seeds usually cost 30 or 40 yuan a jin, or even more than 100 yuan a jin.

From the perspective of breeders and seed enterprises, the process of seed production is extremely complicated, and the human and material resources invested in seed production are always not small costs. Once adverse weather occurs, hybrid seed production will even fail, bringing great hidden dangers to seed safety. "The idea of achieving stable inheritance of hybrid rice advantage and solving the problem of seed production is deeply ingrained in my heart."

At the time, is not no one attention to this problem, the international rice research institute, the international maize and wheat improvement center and other international well-known research institutions, have set up dedicated international research project, this direction became one of the most popular research areas at that time, however, related studies have not been able to make substantive breakthrough, the research direction is also change from hot to cold.

Facing the frontier of agricultural science and technology in the world, facing the country's major agricultural needs. Wang Kejian decided to use his years of research in the field of genetics to lead the team to explore stable breeding of hybrid rice by cloning seeds.

"Research and exploration is like walking a tightrope. We often have to face difficult times, such as failing experiments and running out of funds." For the newly established team, the risk of failure was very high, Wang said. Fortunately, the project received all guarantees and support from the China National Rice Research Institute and the State Key Laboratory.

During their research, Wang and his team often alternated between the rice field and the laboratory. Although the theory is perfectly designed, the final experimental results are always different from the expectations. The perfect test data in the lab always goes wrong in the field, and everything has to start all over again...

"After countless times of watching hope rise and fall, repeated failure, repeated summary, repeated trial and error, we finally found four genes in hybrid rice that are key to the communication of genetic information. When these four genes are inactivated simultaneously, clonal seeds can be produced from its offspring, and these seeds have exactly the same characteristics as the previous generation of hybrid rice. A "hard bone" is thus "nibbled" under.

Wang Kejian reported scientific research progress to Academician Yuan Longping. Chart of Respondents

In 2019, a team led by Wang Kejian used gene editing to create apomictic reproduction in a paper published as a cover story in the journal Nature Biotechnology. Chinese scientists have successfully obtained cloned seeds of hybrid rice, marking a key breakthrough in the zero-to-one apomictic reproduction of hybrid rice. The result, when mature, will dramatically reduce the cost of hybrid rice breeding and make it possible for farmers to keep their own seeds in future.

"Academician Yuan Longping made a special call to congratulate him and spoke highly of the research results. Mr. Yuan said, 'This work has proved the feasibility of apomictic reproduction in hybrid rice and is a major breakthrough in the field of apomictic reproduction. 'At the same time, Mr. Yuan also encouraged us to' make persistent efforts to apply the results into production as soon as possible. '" When Wang Kejian recalled this, he was very excited. He said that Yuan Lao's call added a warm impetus to the team to further implement the translation of scientific research results.

"Despite the breakthrough, there is still a long way to go before hybrid rice seeds can be cloned and put into practice. There may still be difficulties ahead, but as long as there are seeds, there is hope." Wang Kejian said.