Workers in straw hats take to the field for pollination

Every morning for the past two months, dozens of workers wearing white coats and straw hats applied pollen to thousands of Chinese rose plants in a field at an institute on the Northeast Fourth Ring Road in Beijing.

From 9 am to 4:30 pm every day until June 1, horticulturists from the Beijing Institute of Landscape Architecture embarked on a series of tasks, including pollen collection, hybrid pollination and cultivation of new varieties.

Chao Yang, a senior researcher at the institute, who cultivated the first hybrid Chinese rose in 2005, has been involved in pollination work for nearly 20 years.