China's top 10 advances in agricultural science help feed the nation

NANJING - Chinese experts have selected the 10 most significant advances in cutting-edge agricultural science and technology in fields that are making life better for farmers and helping to feed the world's most populous nation.

Research on rewiring of the fruit metabolome in tomato breeding helped restore the original good taste of tomatoes of former times and provided big data and innovative methods for the study of the molecular mechanism of plant metabolites.

Scientists found that a selfish genetic element confers non-Mendelian inheritance in rice, and this study challenges traditional genetic laws, and could help cultivate new high-yield rice varieties.

In another study, scientists discovered a single transcription factor that promotes both yield and immunity in rice.

The selected advances include studies in modulating plant growth-metabolism coordination for sustainable agriculture, genomic variation in more than 3,010 diverse accessions of Asian cultivated rice, and rapid evolution of H7N9 highly pathogenic viruses that emerged in China in 2017.

Chinese scientists have also achieved advances in genetic studies of cotton, bacterial resistance and a new mechanism of plant immune pathways.

The 10 advances by Chinese agricultural scientists last year were announced at the Forum 2019 on Science and Technology for Agricultural and Rural Development in China, which opened Wednesday in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu province.