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Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition

At the exhibition hall of the Rubber Institute of Haikou Institute of Thermal Science, researcher Wu Yuntong (center) tells researchers Gao Xinsheng (right) and Zhang Xiaofei (left) about the historical origins of the team's independently bred rubber varieties and aviation tires.

At the Hainan Danzhou National Rubber Tree Germplasm Resource Garden, researchers are evaluating the diversity of rubber tree seeds.

In the laboratory of the Hainan Danzhou National Rubber Tree Breeding Center, Researcher Gao Xinsheng (left) is leading his graduate students to conduct cytological observations on the bark structure of rubber trees.

Experimenters at the Rubber Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences conduct callus induction: rubber tree anthers are cultured on plant growth medium (left) and developed into callus capable of inducing embryos (right).

In the Danzhou productive experimental area in Hainan, Huang Huasun (right) is leading researcher Li Weiguo (center) and associate researcher Wei Mingming (left) to conduct actual production measurements.

At the Hainan Danzhou Natural Rubber Tree New Planting Material Breeding Innovation Base, Huang Huasun (right) leads scientific researchers to check the growth of somatic embryo seedlings.

In the dwarf pollination garden of the Hainan Danzhou National Rubber Tree Breeding Center, researchers are picking male flowers for artificial hybridization and pollination.

In the greenhouse of the new natural rubber tree planting material breeding innovation base in Danzhou, Hainan, Huang Huasun (second from right) led scientific researchers to check the growth of somatic embryo seedlings on the nursery bed.

At the Hainan Danzhou National Rubber Tree Breeding Center, researchers are discussing the difficulties in rubber tree bud grafting.

02:40

"We could not even think of using our own natural rubber to make tires for domestic aircraft before," said 89-year-old Wu Yuntong at the Rubber Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences in Haikou on July 10. He was quite interested in the black tire in front of him and touched it again and again.

Natural rubber is known as "black gold". It is an irreplaceable strategic resource for high-end manufacturing and is also widely used in the fields of medical care and health. As a typical tropical tree, rubber trees are native to the Amazon jungle. In order to breed rubber tree varieties with independent intellectual property rights, three generations of breeders from the Chinese Academy of Tropical Sciences have taken root in Hainan and carried out a scientific research relay for 66 years.

In 1958, the South China Tropical Forestry Research Institute (the predecessor of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Forestry Sciences) moved to Danzhou, Hainan, to speed up the overall planning of rubber research and breeding. In the same year, 23-year-old Wu Yuntong graduated from university and came to Danzhou to participate in the research on the introduction, screening and cultivation of natural rubber.

After decades of hard work, the rubber tree varieties bred by Wu Yuntong and others were sent to Yunnan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian and other places for trial planting, creating a miracle of large-scale northward migration and large-scale planting in the history of rubber planting in the world.

In 1984, after graduating from university, Huang Huasun joined the rubber tree breeding team of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Sciences and was regarded as a "successor" by predecessors such as Wu Yuntong. It was also at that time that the rubber breeding team started the selection and breeding of cold-resistant, wind-resistant and high-yield rubber tree varieties.

"In fact, rubber trees are very delicate and sensitive to low temperatures and strong winds," said Huang Huasun, chief scientist of the National Natural Rubber Industry Technology System. my country's rubber planting area is located on the northern edge of the tropics, where cold waves and typhoons occur frequently, which is not suitable for the growth of rubber trees. In addition, the introduced varieties are not resistant enough and grow slowly. The same variety grows several years slower in China than abroad.

"We must develop independent varieties suitable for cultivation in our country." In recent years, the eight new cold-resistant, wind-resistant and high-yield varieties bred by the national rubber tree breeding team led by Huang Huasun have been successively selected as the leading varieties of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. The quality of rubber products has reached the level of imported Indonesian first-class smoked sheet rubber. Among them, "Yunyan 77-4" and "Reyan 879" are currently the most cold-resistant and highest-yielding main cultivated varieties in the world.

New varieties support the continuous expansion of China's rubber planting area. Since 1983, China's rubber planting area has expanded from more than 7 million mu to more than 17 million mu, and the annual output of dry rubber has increased from 173,000 tons to 856,000 tons. Among them, the eight new varieties cultivated by the team account for 39.7% of China's rubber planting area, with an additional output value of 25.21 billion yuan.

Today, the younger generation of scientific researchers such as Li Weiguo and Gao Xinsheng have also brought vitality to the rubber breeding industry. They have set their sights on new breeding technologies such as rubber tree gene editing and molecular markers, using new quality productivity to promote the high-quality development of rubber breeding.

"It can be said that under the relay of three generations of breeders, we have witnessed the process of my country's natural rubber industry from scratch and from weak to strong." Gao Xinsheng said that breeding is a career that needs to be adhered to and passed on, and they will continue to work hard in this rubber forest in the future. (All pictures of Qiu Jianghua in this edition were taken by Zhang Mao)

People's Daily Overseas Edition (Page 12, July 23, 2024)