Li Zhensheng has been engaged in the research of distant hybridization and chromosome engineering breeding between wheat and thinopyrum repens for a long time, and has bred a series of wheat varieties such as Xiaoyan No.4, No.5 and No.6, and established a blue monomer wheat line and a self-flowering deletion wheat line for the first time, and established a new method of wheat alien substitution line breeding-deletion backcross breeding, which laid the foundation for wheat chromosome engineering breeding.
Hunger prompted him to embark on the road of "getting wheat"
"This is the Xiaoyan 6 we cultivated. Look, it's chewy. " On the 27th, in his office, Li Zhensheng picked a wheat seed from a wheat specimen, put it neatly on his front teeth, chewed it and showed it to reporters at the scene.
The glittering and translucent wheat grains attracted a great surprise, and Li Zhensheng's eyes showed a proud look. These are high-quality wheat seeds that he and his colleagues have worked hard to cultivate for 20 years. Accumulated extension area1.500 million mu, and wheat yield is more than 8 billion Jin.
This scientist, who is interacting with wheat, initially embarked on the road of "getting wheat", which came from his early hunger experience.
Li Zhensheng was born in the countryside of Zibo. When I was a child, my family was poor, but as farmers, parents attached great importance to their children's education. He went to a private school first, and then went to school.
Unfortunately, when/kloc-was 0/3 years old, his father died and his mother took care of four children, making life more and more difficult. Li Zhensheng finished his second year of high school with the support of his brother, and he couldn't hold on any longer.
After dropping out of school, Li Zhensheng came to Jinan alone, looking for someone to find a job. By chance, he saw the enrollment notice of Shandong Agricultural College in the street, saying that he could provide accommodation, so he took the idea of giving it a try and got it successfully.
"I have food to eat and go to college, which I never dared to think about in the past." Li Zhensheng said that he was hungry and knew the value of food and the importance of agriculture, so he especially cherished this learning opportunity.
So far, Li Zhensheng has been obsessed with the courses of two professors. The head of Shandong Agricultural College is Professor Shen Shouquan from yenching university. He gave students a course on wheat breeding, which was very attractive in simple terms, while another professor, Professor Yu Songlie, vividly taught genetics, which made him interested in this field.
When he returned to his hometown during the holiday, Li Zhensheng also introduced several excellent wheat varieties cultivated by the school to his home. After planting, the yield is indeed higher than the local old varieties, and the villagers have come to change varieties. This gave me the idea of engaging in wheat breeding research in the future.
From grass to wheat
195 1 year, when he graduated from university, he was lucky enough to be assigned to work in Chinese Academy of Sciences. After working in Beijing for five years, in response to the call of the central government to support the northwest construction, he was transferred to the Northwest Institute of Agricultural Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, located in Yangling, Shaanxi, together with the research group 13 colleagues.
In fact, Li Zhensheng first studied grass. During his stay in Beijing, he and his tutor and soil scientist Feng studied how to improve the soil by planting grass. He has collected and planted more than 800 kinds of grass, and his research on grass has a certain foundation.
After arriving in the northwest, it was catching up with the epidemic of wheat stripe rust in the northwest, resulting in a reduction of production by 20% to 30%.
Li Zhensheng, then only 26 years old, was very worried. He decided to engage in wheat improvement research to cultivate excellent disease-resistant wheat for farmers.
"Farmers have planted wheat for thousands of years, and wheat is still so weak and sick, but weeds are neglected, but they grow well." Li Zhensheng, who has studied grass, wants to know whether it is possible to cultivate a wheat variety with strong disease resistance by crossing wheat with natural grass.
At that time, the epidemic of wheat stripe rust was caused by the rapid mutation of pathogens and the slow breeding speed, that is, it took eight years to cultivate a new wheat variety, while stripe rust produced a variety in an average of 5.5 years, which became a worldwide problem at that time. In this case, Li Zhensheng put forward the idea of transferring disease-resistant genes of Gramineae plants to wheat through distant hybridization, and cultivating wheat varieties with lasting disease resistance. This idea was supported by authoritative botanist Wen and plant pathologist at that time. Li Dongyang vibration has been studied for 50 years.
"combination of far and near" to avoid impact
At that time, no one in China had tried to cross irrelevant grass with wheat.
The hybrid varieties of the first generation weeds and wheat were studied. This thing called hybrid generation doesn't look like wheat at all, but just like weeds. Moreover, this cross is a sterile distant cross, and it also faces the problems of cross incompatibility and "crazy separation" of offspring.
At that time, this research was regarded as an arduous task by many people. Li Zhensheng said he didn't know. And the most worrying thing is that because this research is difficult to produce results, he also faces the criticism that "the research work is divorced from reality".
When his research was carried out in the eighth year, the "social education movement" at that time began and he was criticized. Some people say that his research has been going on for eight years, but there is no result. He is divorced from reality and wants him to give up. "At that time, I saw the phased results that have been achieved. How can I bear to give up?" Li Zhensheng said that his philosophical knowledge and research methods helped him.
Li Zhensheng said that he adopted a little philosophical technique, "combining far and near"-when he was doing wheat straw hybridization research, he felt uncertain in his heart, so he also conducted conventional wheat variety hybridization breeding. By 1964, Shengxuan No.5 and No.6 bred by him have been popularized and applied in production. Therefore, the task force finally said that after all, he has two varieties that play a role in production, and it cannot be said that his work is divorced from reality. Only in this way can we pass the customs.
By 1979, Li Zhensheng's research finally made a breakthrough, and Xiaoyan No.6 cultivated by him was successfully popularized in a large area, with the qualities of lasting disease resistance, high yield, stable yield and high quality. At that time, there was a saying in the rural areas of Shaanxi that "we should eat noodles and plant Xiaoyan", which led to Xiaoyan 6 not being popularized.
Xiaoyan 6 has become an important backbone parent of wheat breeding in China, with nearly 50 derived varieties and an extension area of more than 300 million mu. Wheat production increased by more than 654.38+0.5 billion Jin.
It is the farmers who really score.
In fact, from 1978 to 1998, a large number of excellent wheat varieties cultivated by Li Zhensheng and his colleagues contributed to the large-scale increase of grain output in China in recent 20 years.
A set of data shows that from 1978 to 1998, the total output of rice in China increased by 62.7 billion kilograms, and the total output of wheat increased by 69.4 billion kilograms, exceeding that of rice.
The breeding process of Xiaoyan 6 is as long as 23 years, and it is difficult for others to repeat it. So Li Zhensheng introduced chromosome engineering technology into the field of wheat breeding, established the method of apoplast backcross, shortened the time of distant hybridization breeding to three and a half years, and opened up a new way for chromosome engineering breeding.
This innovation has attracted the attention of the international chromosome engineering community. Well-known experts such as Sears, President of the American Genetic Society, proposed that the first international conference on plant chromosome engineering be held in Xi 'an in 1986 in order to see his achievements in the experimental field in Li Zhensheng.
At this point, Li Zhensheng has become famous, and various rewards follow. But Li Zhensheng is still the most keen to see wheat in the fields. He said, "It's the farmers who really grade me."
Li Zhensheng is very aware of the importance of food. In 1980s, China experienced a three-year pause in grain production since 1984. In the past three years, the grain has not increased, but the population has increased by more than 50 million. The government is anxious to find a solution to break this chaotic situation. In this case, he and the agricultural experts of the Academy of Sciences, after three months' investigation, put forward the management scheme of low-and medium-yield fields in Huang-Huai-Hai.
When China's grain increased from 800 billion Jin to 900 billion Jin, the Huanghuaihai region increased by 50.48 billion Jin, accounting for half.
Since then, Li Zhensheng has raised the issue of food security on many occasions. In 2004, China's grain decreased for five consecutive years. He delivered a speech entitled "Resuming food production, time waits for no one" at the Humanities Forum, which attracted the attention of all parties.
Later, due to the favorable measures taken by the central government to support agriculture, the recovery growth was realized for three consecutive years, and the grain output in 2006 was nearly 1 trillion Jin.
The old man knows very well that the food problem of China people is a big problem in the world. In April 2005, he gave a speech at Boao Forum, responding to American Lester Brown's best-selling book "Who will feed China? Ten years ago. ","We should tell the world the truth, the people of China can feed themselves! Now, in the future, we believe that with the correct policies, scientific and technological development and economic development in China, we will be able to support ourselves.