New preservation center to house 1.5m seed samples

China kicked off a crop germpalsm preservation project on Tuesday, which is designed to house about 1.5 million seed samples, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said.

The project highlights a new preservation center that will nearly quadruple the capacity of the existent institution that was built for the same purpose in the mid 1980s, the ministry said on Wednesday.

The new center is now under construction at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing.

Han Changfu, minister of agriculture and rural affairs, said the limited storage capability of 400,00

0 seed samples, outdated facilities and lack of information technology has rendered the old center unsuitable for the country's rising demands in terms of seed cultivation, research and development.

He added that the new center will play a role in protecting valuable and rare seed samples, safeguarding national food security and boosting high quality development of agriculture.

"The new center will be equipped with a world-class management system that incorporates the latest automation, information and intelligent technologies," he said.

In the past decade, China has stepped up efforts in preserving and tapping into its massive volume of crop seed samples to lay a solid foundation for scientific innovation in the germpalsm field.

The country plans to accelerate its gene discovery and transformation, and achieve more breakthroughs in genome editing for crops in the future, Han said.