In recent years, Hainan has given full play to its natural location advantages, based on Sanya Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City, to develop a technology innovation platform for the whole seed industry chain, creating a "Nanfan Silicon Valley."
Due to its favorable light and heat conditions, Hainan has been a national breeding ground since the 1950s. Statistics show that every year, tens of thousands of scientific and technological personnel from more than 700 units in 29 provinces across the country come to Hainan to work. More than 20,000 new varieties of major crops have been bred in Hainan, accounting for more than 70 percent of the new varieties bred nationwide.
"Researchers from all over the country have gathered here, making the Nanfan Base a large-scale information resource base for agricultural science and technology, production, and operation. However, in the past, each scientific research unit did not give full play to the advantages of group operations, thus leading to a waste of resources and tight land use," said Xia Mian, an official of Hainan Yazhou Bay Seed Laboratory.
Hainan Yazhou Bay Seed Laboratory was established in May last year. To date, the laboratory has built 10 public and open scientific research platforms, covering a total area of more than 240,000 square meters. It has attracted 40 teams, 750 researchers, 1,158 graduate students, as well as 20 agriculture-related universities, scientific research institutions, and seed enterprises to settle in it.
China issued a 10-year plan to build the Nanfan Scientific and Research Breeding Base in 2015, designating 268,000 mu (17,867 hectares) of cultivated land for the Nanfan Base.
Since 2018, the implementation of the 10-year plan has been accelerated. To date, 242,600 mu of high-standard farmland in Nanfan Base was built or renovated.
In addition, the construction of the supporting service area has been basically completed, which will further meet the living, production, and scientific research needs of the Nanfan scientific research unit after it is fully put into use.
