Zhang Wencai was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, with the date of birth: 1904+065438+ 10/01. 1922 was admitted to the Biology Department of Zhijiang University, 1923 was transferred to the Horticulture Department of Agricultural College of Jinling University, and won the "Golden Key" award of Jinling University with 1927 as the first prize. After graduation, he stayed in school as a teaching assistant. 1929, China Horticultural Society was founded by Xu, Wu Gengmin, Hu and others. 193 1 year, Chen Jiageng, a patriotic overseas Chinese, founded Jimei Agriculture and Forestry College in Xiamen, Fujian. Chen Yuguang, president of Jinling University, recommended Zhang Wencai as a teacher and principal of fruit trees. After his arrival, he and He Jingzhen set up an experimental orchard in tianmashan, Tongan County, and planted citrus, bananas, pineapples, longan, litchi and other fruit trees. In the past two years, Jimei Agricultural College has trained more than 500 graduates and assigned them to work in Guangdong, Fujian and other provinces, which has promoted the development of local fruit industry. 1933-19371933 Jimei Agriculture and Forestry College was closed, and Zhang Wencai returned to the Agricultural College of Zhejiang University as a lecturer in horticulture and director of Hu Xiang Experimental Farm. While teaching, he also engaged in scientific research, treated oranges with ethylene to promote their coloring and maturity in advance, and achieved gratifying results. 1934 The first academic paper on ethylene treatment of citrus was published in Journal of Horticultural Society of China. 1935 In April, Zhang Wencai went to the United States to study, and in July of the same year, he entered the University of London to pursue his doctorate. Under the guidance of RonaldHatton, an authoritative person in the field of fruit trees in Britain, Zhang Wencai conducted a study on the compatibility between fruit tree grafted rootstocks and fruit ears at Dongmaolin Fruit Tree Experimental Station in Britain, and put forward some physiological and biochemical indexes related to the compatibility of fruit trees, which improved the grafting survival rate of fruit trees and made dwarf rootstocks obtain high yield and high quality results. He was very popular, got a doctorate and was recommended as a member of the Royal Society. After Zhang Wencai's doctoral thesis was published in the British Journal of Fruitology, he was invited as an associate researcher by the Department of Fruits of Cornell University and the Department of Citrus of the University of California. After he went to Frost in the United States from 65438 to 0937, he conducted a research on citrus seed selection with professors Swingle and Lauste, and selected some mutant strains of navel orange. At the same time, the compatibility between citrus rootstock and scion combination was studied, and it was put forward that citrus as navel orange rootstock could achieve the effect of dwarfing, early fruiting and high yield. Zhang Wencai knows that excellent fruit tree varieties are the basis of high yield and high quality. In the early 1970s, he led teachers and students of Yichang Branch to go deep into citrus producing areas in western Hubei and carry out mass large-scale citrus seed selection. He taught farmers the purpose, standards and methods of seed selection, mobilized them to select excellent individual plants, and made a "gift" to the country, and then conducted scientific analysis and identification in the laboratory. In just three years, 270,000 satsumas and 200,000 sweet oranges in Yichang were produced by universal suffrage, of which 43 were the best. Among them, Ye Tao orange 139, Zigui orange 35, Xingshan Shaohe Jincheng orange 1 kloc-0/,Huangling seedless sweet orange, National Day1,very early-maturing orange, National Day 4 and Mid-Autumn Festival orange. The quality of' Xingshan Shaohe Jincheng 10 1No.' is better than that of' hamlin' in the United States, and the very early-maturing' National Day 1No.' citrus is 24 days earlier than that of Japanese' Xingjin Zaosheng'. Now some varieties have been promoted in China and introduced from abroad.
On the basis of years of mass selection, Zhang Wencai put forward the idea of choosing the best among the best. That is, the best strain is grafted on an adult citrus tree, which can blossom and bear fruit in the second year, and then compared with the fruit of the original mother tree. If there is no difference between the two, it means that the inheritance is consistent, and the propagation and promotion can be identified in the third year, thus speeding up the breeding process of new varieties. He summarized this breeding process as a new procedure of "one year selection, two years selection and three years appraisal and popularization". This method has been rapidly popularized in production and adopted by some experts in the United States. From 65438 to 0980, Zhang Wencai, together with young teachers, used modern bioengineering technology to carry out citrus protoplast culture, artificial mutation and genetic engineering research, and obtained protoplast regeneration plants of Jincheng Orange and Ye Tao Orange, and induced 0.8% salt-tolerant citrus rootstocks, which found a way to cultivate citrus for tens of thousands of hectares of coastal beaches in China. He and he took the lead in the experiment of citrus protoplast fusion in China, and cultivated somatic hybrids of Ningbo Jinbo+Summer Orange, Rough Lemon+hamlin Sweet Orange. It opens up a new way for cultivating citrus with cold resistance, disease resistance and salt tolerance, and makes the research results of citrus bioengineering in China reach the international advanced level. 1979, he introduced virus-free citrus varieties navel orange and summer orange of 19 from Spain and the United States, as well as virus-free and improved variety breeding techniques, and carried out virus-free improved variety breeding and promotion for the first time in China. 1983 trained more than 0 citrus technicians all over the country103. More than 10,000 virus-free navel oranges and summer oranges have been propagated to/kloc-0.7 million mu foreign trade export bases in Jiangxi, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi and other places, and a number of commercial fruits have been distributed in the international market. "Citrus Shoot Tip Grafting Virus-free and Virus-free Improved Variety Breeding Technology" won the second prize of the Ministry of Agriculture for scientific and technological progress 1987. "Citrus protoplast culture, regeneration and plant fusion" won the first prize of the Ministry of Agriculture for scientific and technological progress 1989.
Zhang Wencai has contributed to the establishment of citrus commodity production base, and spared no effort to promote agriculture and develop rural economy in mountainous areas through science and technology. He often goes to the countryside to help farmers develop citrus production and get rich, and is praised as "God of Wealth" by orange farmers.
As early as 1956, Zhang Wencai went deep into Yaogang Township, Yichang, a mountainous area in western Hubei, where there were many barren hills and little cultivated land, and farmers had a hard life. He taught farmers citrus cultivation techniques, trained more than 400 citrus grafting hands and popularized improved varieties. Later, I came to Yaogang for technical guidance many times. The annual output of citrus in this township is 20 million kilograms, and a large number of oranges are exported. It is an important production base of citrus export commodities in Hubei Province.
In Zigui County, the hometown of the great poet Qu Yuan, Zhang Wencai found that the local citrus trees were of poor quality and had many sour seeds. In 1962, he held a technical training course attended by more than 100 people to teach citrus grafting technology. Farmers have replanted citrus saplings, reaching more than 660,000 in the county, and the quality of citrus has been significantly improved. For a long time, he regarded Zigui as his second hometown and actively helped the local area to develop citrus production. The annual output of citrus in Zigui County exceeds 1 100 million Jin, which is one of the citrus export bases in Hubei Province.
On one occasion, when Zhang Wencai was investigating in the Baili Huangguoshu Base in Yuan 'an County, he had to take the narrow path in 15 up the mountain. Zhang Wencai suffered from hernia when he climbed halfway up the mountain. He only rested on the grass by the roadside for half an hour, then continued to climb the mountain and completed the investigation task with illness. Yichang's annual output of citrus is 360 million Jin, which is inseparable from Zhang Wencai's long-term guidance and efforts.
1in August, 1980, he was invited to participate in a citrus investigation group organized by Jiangxi Provincial Department of Agriculture and Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and visited 9 counties and cities in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province with Shen, and put forward a report on the development plan of citrus production in Ganzhou. Subsequently, he visited Ganzhou twice, negotiated and trained technicians to help Nankang establish a regional citrus research institute. Therefore, Ganzhou citrus production has developed rapidly, becoming the export base of navel orange and summer orange in China.
1979 10, Zhang Wencai saw that the excellent citrus varieties selected and promoted by himself had spread all over the banks of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, and he wrote a poem entitled "Brilliant and Great Thirty Years" with emotion:
On the 30th National Day, there was a tour of the Three Gorges, and apes sang along.
Green water and green mountains are better than the past, and colorful oranges are full of forests.
1990, the Ministry of Agriculture decided to build the largest modern fruit tree commodity production base in China in the mountainous and hilly area of 65,438+10,000 square kilometers in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River, from Yibin, Sichuan to Yangxin, Hubei, so that the production, production, storage, transportation and sales will form a systematic project. Zhang Wencai is the director of the Science and Technology Advisory Committee of the Yangtze River Fruit Belt of the Ministry of Agriculture. Now he is contributing his own waste heat to realize this grand blueprint.