Starting from 1958, Xu Helin established a vegetable base in the suburb of Nanjing, summed up farmers' experience, popularized advanced technology and made friends with vegetable farmers. He is well aware of the sufferings of vegetable farmers, so he firmly established the idea of serving farmers. These experiences have had an important impact on his future research topics and work attitude. For more than 40 years, he has been engaged in vegetable research, and cultivated series of Chinese cabbage varieties such as Feng Chun, Chunlei, Chunmian, Heifeng, Chen Su 1, series of Chinese cabbage varieties such as Qingfeng, Qingshi and Xia Feng, cucumber varieties such as Zaokang and Lufeng, early-maturing and high-quality watermelon varieties such as Sumi 1 and tomato varieties with disease resistance and high yield, which played an important role in production. After the 1980s, with the urgent demand for varieties in the market, he presided over the introduction and cultivation of high-grade vegetables with special needs, and widely introduced famous foreign vegetables. A series of achievements have been made in the popularization of plastic film and disease-resistant breeding of solanaceous vegetables, which has made important contributions to vegetable production.
In 1980s, when Xu Helin was the director of the Vegetable Research Institute of Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, he actively responded to the call of the CPC Central Committee and carried out the reform of the scientific and technological system. In scientific research, priority should be given to national key projects, provincial and ministerial key projects or projects serving production. He attaches great importance to the cultivation of talents. In addition to training master students, he also sent more than a dozen scientific and technological cadres abroad for further study. Becoming a scientific research backbone or academic leader after returning to China has laid a solid foundation for the further development of the institute. At the same time, he also paid close attention to the development of science and technology, set up the Science and Technology Development Department, paid attention to the transformation of scientific and technological achievements of the Institute, and studied the breeding technology of improved varieties, so that the main achievements of the Institute were quickly applied to production in many provinces (municipalities directly under the Central Government) and achieved good social and economic benefits. With the mutual promotion of scientific research and development, the Institute became one of the "Top Ten" in the development of agricultural science and technology system in China, entered the "Top 100" comprehensive evaluation research institute of the Ministry of Agriculture during the Seventh Five-Year Plan and the Eighth Five-Year Plan, and was twice rated as "provincial civilized unit" by the Jiangsu provincial government.
From 1982 to 1983, Xu Helin was sent by the Ministry of Agriculture to Michigan State University for cooperative research on vegetable disease resistance breeding. During this period, he visited the research center of the US Department of Agriculture and many agricultural universities and scientific research units, and had academic exchanges with peer experts. Later, he went to Japan, Thailand and New Zealand for investigation and visit, or participated in international academic conferences, which strengthened exchanges and cooperation with foreign counterparts.
Xu Helin has promoted scientific research achievements in the suburbs of Nanjing for many years and made contributions to the implementation of the "vegetable basket project". 65438-0986 Nanjing Science and Technology Commission awarded him the title of "Nanjing Suburban Agriculture Expert with Outstanding Contribution". From 65438 to 0995, the Nanjing Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government awarded him the title of "Science and Technology Hero" in Nanjing, which was rewarded handsomely.