Beijing, the magnificent Syngenta headquarters building.
President Wang De looked at a document on the table seriously. This was a work report that no one could find fault with. The main content was the long-term strategic cooperation with Sanqing Pharmaceutical on insecticides.
During the global locust plague, Sanqing grabbed a huge order of US$6 billion with its special-effect insecticides, and Syngenta, as a manufacturer, also got a share of the pie. This year's financial report will undoubtedly be much better.
The two parties will continue to cooperate in the future. Sanqing will come up with the formula and they will produce and sell it, thereby conquering the global pesticide market.
Looking at the huge numbers in the report, he couldn't help but feel extremely happy. He got up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked into the distance.
After three years, this sinking ship finally began to set sail and ride the wind and waves.
Four years ago, Huaxia Chemical Group acquired Syngenta, with a transaction volume of US$43 billion, becoming the largest overseas acquisition in the history of Huaxia Enterprises. Since then, the global agrochemical industry structure has been dominated by the three pillars of Eagle Country, Europa and Huaxia. form.
However, the acquisition is just the beginning. After the purchase, how to absorb this world's top three agrochemical giant into the Huaxia system and integrate the domestic and foreign teams together to make Huaxia's local agriculture reach the world's leading level is undoubtedly a question. A huge challenge.
This cannot be achieved through simple administrative orders.
Wang De's mind flashed back to a winter day four years ago, when he was appointed as the agricultural president of the newly established Syngenta Group and boarded the high-speed train to Beijing for his appointment alone.
At that time, the group's agrochemical business was facing the most difficult moment. The disorganized team had low morale and its prospects were bleak due to annual losses.
What was delivered to him was a stack of resignation letters, and what he couldn't accept the most was the departure of a large number of young people.
After a work meeting, he was shocked to find that there were only two people left in the scientific research team of the fertilizer department.
This year he was 41 years old, and he was facing a difficult moment in his life in middle age.
Huaxia Chemical's agricultural business has a long history. Its fertilizer business once covered 95% of domestic arable land, and it owned China's first seed company.
In the wave of reform and opening up, numerous competitors in the agricultural field failed to defeat it, but now they are in trouble.
Fortunately, after three years of unremitting efforts, he finally proved himself.
The company's agricultural business has regained a new lease of life and continues to turn losses into profits.
And he was also appointed as the Chinese President of Syngenta Group last year.
This seemingly glorious moment actually entered another battlefield.
At this moment, Syngenta's plant protection business (pesticides and fertilizers) has benefited from integration and reorganization and has achieved significant growth, becoming the ballast of the company's revenue.
As long as the plant protection business continues to grow steadily, Syngenta's other businesses can confidently and boldly make breakthroughs and investments to respond to the national call and vigorously develop the seed cultivation business.
Last year, the central government specifically proposed to carry out technical research on "stuck necks" of seed sources to fight for a turnaround in the seed industry. The seed industry immediately received high hopes from all the people.
Especially in today's new situation of international economic and trade relations, seeds are crucial to national food security, and seed-related topics have suddenly become the focus of domestic people's attention.
How to turn around the seed industry has become a topic of concern to government departments, scientific research experts and even people on the streets.
The seed team led by Syngenta and Wang De also stood in the spotlight.
He personally served as the team leader and started a tough battle in the seed industry, determined to complete the glorious mission of exploring the path for modern agriculture in China.
A consensus was quickly established within Syngenta that the seed industry is the company's top priority, and all departments should fully cooperate with the work of the seed business department. The company can even invest in the seed business regardless of cost.
"If the seed succeeds, the company will succeed; if the seed fails, the company's other businesses will fail no matter how many times they are doubled."
Wang De said this in an internal high-level meeting with a desperate momentum.
The high hopes of the people and the fate of enterprises have been firmly tied together since then.
Under heavy pressure, he always feels anxious and often has trouble sleeping at night.
He no longer takes any vacations, weekend meetings have become a regular occurrence, and his workload has doubled or tripled.
Even so, he had no regrets. There was only a feeling of family and country stirring up and down in his heart, supporting him to persevere.
No matter how stressful it is, as long as he can participate in it, he will feel extremely lucky.
Because this is the dream of a generation of Chinese farmers.
Their mission is to integrate domestic and foreign innovative resources, run at three times the speed of others, and reduce the generation gap between domestic and foreign seed industries.
Maybe in 10 years, the two sides will be able to keep pace, and even Chinese companies will be able to take the lead.
Due to insufficient intellectual property protection in the past, Huaxia Seed Industry has insufficient innovation capabilities in the entire industry.
There are more than 8,000 seed companies in the country, of which only 100 at most have R&D capabilities, and most of them are sales companies.
The concentration of the seed industry is also very low. The top three seed companies in Eagle Country account for 70% of the market, and the top 10 seed companies in China account for less than 30% of the market. The small scale of the companies means that they cannot guarantee R&D investment. .
Over the past year or so, Wang De has led Zhengda to carry out a series of actions.
On the research and development side, an innovation center for corn, soybeans, rice and other crops has been created.
On the sales side, a co-creation platform for the Chinese seed industry has been created.
At the same time, it also strengthens industry-university-research cooperation with the Academy of Agricultural Sciences and uses advanced gene editing, biological breeding and other technologies to develop better products.
Finally, a seed museum was established to collect rich seed resources.
The company's investment has paid off handsomely, and dozens of new varieties of corn and rice have been approved.
However, this is not enough. The process of seed cultivation is far more complicated than people imagine.
In the past 30 years, global breakthroughs in breeding levels have resulted in average annual yield increases of only a few percentage points.
To win this turnaround in the seed industry, they need more than just some new varieties that increase yields by a few percentage points.
What they want is a hit product, one that can significantly increase production, so that they can meet the expectations of the country and the people for breeding.
When hybrid rice was promoted and applied on a large scale in China, the yield increased by a full 20% compared to conventional rice.
Therefore, developing a new product that can increase production by more than 10 to 20% is their ultimate goal.
To this end, Wang De's team turned their attention to the most cutting-edge biotechnology-gene editing.
Domestic scientific research institutions have conducted in-depth research on the genomes of corn, soybean and rice.
As long as they continue to study and find genes that control yield and disease resistance, they can use gene editing technology to develop new varieties.
The current yield level of soybeans and corn in our country is not high, only about 60% of that in Eagle Country. Therefore, the potential for developing high-yield genetic soybeans and corn is very broad.
Unfortunately, Syngenta is an expert in agriculture, but not so much in biotechnology.
In terms of gene editing technology, they have frequently encountered obstacles and encountered technical bottlenecks.
Wang De looked at the distant scenery outside the window, and a new idea came to his mind.
He also saw the news that the desert prince traveled thousands of miles to come to China and spent a lot of money to purchase genetic drugs.
Coupled with Sanqing’s previous innovations and breakthroughs in genetic drugs for rare diseases.
Sanqing’s genetic technology is undoubtedly one of the best in the world. So, can we join forces with it to apply gene editing technology to the seed industry and develop new hot-selling seeds?
As soon as this idea emerged, it quickly grew from a spark into a raging flame.
Wang De turned around resolutely, returned to his desk, and dialed the number of a Sanqing executive.
"Hello, is this Mr. Sun? I'm Wang De from Syngenta."
The person on the other end of the phone was Sun Chengren. He had basically negotiated the cooperation between Sanqing and Syngenta in pesticides, so the two of them were familiar with each other.
Both parties are veterans of the shopping mall. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, they immediately went straight to the topic.
"Well, I heard that Sanqing's technology in gene editing is very powerful, so I want to have further cooperation with Sanqing in genetic crops. The country is also vigorously supporting the reform and innovation of the seed industry, and there is a lot of potential in this area. "
"Oh, it sounds very attractive." Sun Chengren was also a little moved, but after thinking about the notoriety of genetically modified foods, he couldn't help but hesitate: "But I heard that genetically modified foods don't seem to be very popular."
"Mr. Sun, please listen to my explanation. Genetically modified crops are completely different from gene-edited crops. The former adds other heterogeneous genes, while the latter only knocks out or expresses some original genes, so it is not much different from ordinary breeding. It's just that Greatly improved efficiency and shortened time.”
"Crop breeding has been going on for thousands of years. Even now, if traditional breeding methods are used, it will take several generations and 5-8 years to cultivate suitable new crops."
"However, if gene editing tools are directly used for genome manipulation, the time for crop breeding can often be shortened to less than one year, thus greatly saving time."
"That's amazing." Sun Chengren was shocked and praised repeatedly.
"We have enough advantages in agriculture, and Sanqing's genetic technology is so outstanding. If we work together to develop new genetic crops, it will undoubtedly be a win-win situation." Wang De couldn't help but get excited when he thought of the prospects of cooperation between the two parties.
Sun Chengren couldn't help but nodded and said, "I'm a little tempted by what you said. Let me react to Mr. Wei, and if he agrees, I'll tell you."
Wang De felt a little uneasy: "Do you think General Wei agrees to such cooperation?"
"This is a good thing. It will be of great benefit to the country and the people. Based on my understanding of him, there is absolutely no problem. Just wait for my good news."
After Sun Chengren hung up the phone, he immediately ran to report the matter to Wei Kang.
Wei Kang was suddenly a little surprised. Syngenta had reaped the benefits of cooperation with Sanqing, and it was obvious that he couldn't stop.
However, innovation in the seed industry is of great significance. It can not only greatly increase grain production and allow China to achieve food independence, but also enable people to completely get rid of hunger. This is obviously a good thing that benefits the present and will benefit the future.
"No problem, we happen to be very interested in this aspect, and we can work together to achieve cross-border strategic cooperation in agriculture."
Weicome immediately made a decision and agreed to Syngenta’s request for cooperation.
Three days later, Wang De arrived in Kunming with his seed team.
After some negotiations, the two parties signed a new cooperation agreement.
Sanqing’s crop department, which was established not long ago, finally has a place to play.
After the contract was signed, Syngenta's seed team stayed in Sanqing, and the two parties formed a new project team and officially started research on high-yield crops.
The first target is soybeans. Since China mainly relies on imported soybeans, in order to achieve food independence, it is necessary to develop a new high-yielding soybean.
Fortunately, agricultural experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have already made some achievements in soybean genome research.
Scientists have discovered key genes that control soybean grain size, oil content and protein content. This discovery is of great significance for improving soybean yield and quality through gene editing technology.
This gene, called "Sweet 10", plays a key role in controlling soybean seed development and oil accumulation.
The study further found that if the "Sweet 10" gene is knocked out, the weight of 100 soybean seeds will be reduced by 40.2%, the oil content will be reduced by 40.7%, and the protein content will be increased by 32.1%.
If the expression of this gene is increased in cultivated soybeans, the weight and oil content of 100 soybean seeds will be significantly increased, and the yield of a single soybean plant can be increased by 11% to 20%.
In addition, scientists also discovered another "Sweet 15" gene that regulates soybean grain number. When combined with the results of this study, it is expected to achieve greater breakthroughs in important traits such as high yield and high quality of soybeans.
Therefore, the project team plans to start with these two genes and simultaneously increase the expression of the "Sweet 10" and "Sweet 15" genes to see if they can develop a genetic soybean with increased yield and high oil content.
Biologists in Sanqing soon had a breakthrough.
"What? Gene editing was successful and new seeds have been developed?" Wang De received the good news from the seed team in the capital.
After Wang De listened to the report, he suddenly fell into a trance. This must have been too fast.
In just two weeks, Sanqing's genetic team used crispr-cas9 gene editing technology to successfully express two genes in soybean cells and cultured seed samples.
Next, Syngenta’s seed team needs to select a suitable soybean planting area, conduct experiments, and observe subsequent performance.
Lu Province, an agricultural base of Syngenta, welcomed a group of excited visitors.
As soon as Wang De got off the plane, he rushed into the base with the key personnel of the group in a hurry.
The entourage behind him carefully held a box containing the seed samples for this experiment.
The experiment this time is on high-yield soybeans. If the experiment is successful, there will be a series of new crops such as high-yield corn and drought-resistant rice.
A group of people walked into a rapid breeding plant workshop. It was warm as spring, with suitable temperature, humidity, and sufficient light.
The control here is highly automated, and conditions such as light intensity, temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide concentration are all automatically adjusted.
On the white shelves, there are culture tanks filled with soil, most of which are planted with green seedlings.
Generally speaking, in this kind of rapid breeding plant factory, customized light sources are used to provide the best light, and nutrients are accurately supplied according to the nutritional needs of different periods. The environment can also be precisely controlled to provide seeds with various growth stages. The best growing environment.
Therefore, the traditional crop growth cycle can be shortened by half.
For soybeans, the 120-day growth cycle can be shortened to about 60 days.
With everyone watching, the staff at the base quickly planted the seeds one by one.
Everything that follows will be left to time.
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