YNU innovative hybrid rice core technology passes expert appraisal

New Technology for Reproduction of Rice Sporophyte Cryptic Male Sterility Lines – led by Professor Zhang Yi from the School of Agriculture at Yunnan University (YNU) – has recently passed the technical appraisal organized by ZKHC (Beijing) Sci-tech Achievements Evaluation Center.

The center is a third-party scientific and technological achievements evaluation agency recognized by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Experts of the center make technical appraisals for new technology. [Photo/ynu.edu.cn]

An expert panel of the center unanimously agreed that this new technology has a novel concept, vital innovation, and significant application potential, which is beneficial for promoting the upgrading of hybrid rice.

Hybrid rice is crucial in ensuring food security and has evolved to the third generation.

After multiple repetitions and improvements, Zhang's team ultimately developed a novel, efficient, low-cost, low-risk general male sterility breeding technology. The new technology has solved the issue of the inability of rice to reproduce a completely sterile population with ordinary male sterility. The related design has been granted seven national invention patents.

In addition, this technology has received funding from various projects, including the National Natural Science Foundation.