Liu Binghua, 61, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, will soon be known as a proud father when a plot of wheat near Beijing's Third Ring Road is harvested this June.

His child, "super wheat," a new breed with a yield of 15 percent per unit more than an average wheat yield.

If successful, it could eventually lead to doubling of China's present per-hectare wheat yield. But Liu admitted that they are still working to improve the taste of the flour made of such wheat.

As the nation grows increasingly alarmed by the international catchwords "food security," it has never ceased its efforts in grinding out super-yield crops to feed its growing population.

The efforts have partly paid off just as the "father of hybrid rice" Yuan Longping developed varieties that have fed nearly half of the country's population.

"Yuan and Liu's achievements can be called real breakthroughs in solving China's grain problems," said Liu Jian, a former vice-minister of agriculture.

Following rice, wheat is the nation's second most important staple food, with an annual output accounting for 22 percent of the country's total grain yield. It is widely grown in northern and southern areas of China.

Led by Liu, the team from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences found last summer that the highest per-hectare yield of the high-yield wheat was 10.7 tons, nearly 6.5 tons more than China's average per-hectare yield for wheat last year.

"If the high-yield seeds were to be widely used in wheat-planting regions of China, the country's grain security could be greatly ensured," said Liu, who has been working on breeding wheat varieties for more than two decades.

Now, Liu is waiting for a national assessment to officially label his wheat varieties with the moniker of "super wheat" by June, the season when his wheat is to be reaped. He expects the yield at his one-mu (0.06 hectare) test field near the Third Ring Road could surpass 0.5 tons, 0.15 tons to 0.2 tons more than the average.

"The wheat in other experimental fields nationwide has grown well and I'm confident our breakthrough is worthy of the title," said Liu.

The national scientific criteria for a crop seed to be crowned with the title of "super" require its per-unit output to be at least 15 percent higher than the average.

High yields nationwide

The breakthrough resulted from the variety named Lunxuan 987, a wheat variety which was successfully developed by Liu's team in July 1998.

During previous years, his team had been working to improve the breed, which would see different outputs in areas as weather and soil conditions varied.

"All the experiments in previous years showed that it was a really high-yield variety," said Liu, noting that the experiments were carried out in Jiangsu, Henan provinces and Beijing during the 1998-2004 period.

Last year's results showed the per-hectare yield of 10.7 tons in Jiangsu was the highest, followed by 9.1 tons per hectare in test fields in Changping District of Beijing and almost 10 tons in Xinxiang of Central China's Henan Province.

Liu expects further progress in his experiments, because he claims he has found "ideal tools."

Liu's confidence is based on his research that enables him to find a set of practical and quantitative cyclic wheat breeding methods and techniques. They can greatly improve wheat properties such as resistance to lodging and disease, high yield and quality.

Liu attributed today's achievements to a series of happenstance and never-ending hard work.

"Generally speaking, I'm lucky because my work has always gone smoothly," said Liu.

At the turn of 1970s, the government was alarmed by potential challenges of food security and launched a national campaign to enhance grain output.

Breakthroughs by Yuan Longping -- the "father of hybrid rice" -- were also made under such a historic context.

For wheat breeding, the beginning dates back to 1972, when a grass-roots agricultural researcher named Gao Zhongli in Taigu County of Shanxi Province happened to find a stalk of wheat of a particular genetic variety in a field.

"That's the beginning of our story, and if there was no such a stalk of wheat, there would be no super wheat variety," said Liu. "The wheat found by Gao was later named Taigu infertile wheat because of the complete infertility of its stamen and the pistil's easy access to pollen.

Liu said the Taigu wheat was, at that stage, the most satisfactory infertile material for hybrid wheat breeding because its infertile stamen created opportunities for the pistil to cross-pollinate with other wheat of better genetic traits.

"The stalk is really unique in terms of its genetic trait. We are lucky because we found it in China," said Liu.

Liu found that the next generation of the Taigu variety consisted of wheat that was half infertile and half fertile. But they were of the same height and it proved difficult to tell them apart. Liu then decided to sort infertile from fertile and he designed a plan to use a genetic marker.

Luck was on Liu's side again because Chinese researchers found an ideal genetic marker, Aibian I, a brand of wheat only 35 centimeters in height, half of the normal height.

He cross-pollinated the infertile wheat with the short wheat and a new breed with a short stalk and male infertility was born.

This new generation was called Aibai wheat, which consisted of infertile and fertile stalks. But the most interesting thing is that the infertile wheat was identifiable by its low stature, meaning infertile wheat was shorter than its fertile cousin.

"That's the ideal result," said Liu, adding that Aibai wheat kept its male sterility, strong stalk and particular look and became a desirable cyclic screening tool for wheat breeding.

Then Liu's team started rotational screening by planting Aibai wheat and many other wheat varieties with ideal genetic traits together and offering chances for them to exchange genes.

Liu said the screening is a process to select "the best out of the quality varieties."

Lunxuan 987 was one of the products of this process and incorporated the genetic properties of many wheat breeds. It has a stalk height of 85 centimeters, features a resistance to lodging, a powdery mildew and stripe rust and is able to shed its yellow leaves when it ripens.

"But we are continuously improving its properties, and now we are trying to make it tolerant to drought," said Liu.

Breeding dedication

Born in 1944 in the countryside of Central China's Henan Province, Liu said his passion for wheat breeding originates from childhood memory of his family's toiling away in hardship.

Liu remembers that when he was a junior middle school student, his stomach would often have to be satisfied with steamed bread -- there were no vegetables to be had.

In the years before he graduated from senior middle school in 1963, Liu recalled that he was always hungry because of nationwide grain shortage.

"Unconsciously, I have been on a mission to find solutions to yield more crops for the nation ever since," said Liu, adding that starvation happened even in Henan, a staple province for China's wheat planting.

Two years after graduating from Henan University of Agriculture in 1968, he became a teacher in the province's Nanyang.

But that didn't end Liu's passion for the study of genetics.

"I read and memorized all the books on genetics I could get during those years," the scientist said.

In 1979, he started his study for a master's degree at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, where his tutor Deng Jingyang had been doing genetic research on infertile wheat.

"Actually, I continued his study and made breakthroughs," said Liu.

Liu was exuberant that the government attached great importance to his findings and has supported his team in testing the new variety throughout the nation this year, even in high-altitude regions such as the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Recently, the Ministry of Finance decided to earmark 30 million yuan (US$3.6 million) to further improve the high-yield seeds.

"We can improve genetic traits of the variety in line with local conditions when we plant it in different regions," he added.

Concerns and goal

China feeds 22 percent of the world's population on only 7 percent of the world's arable land. That means grain security must be placed at the very top of the government's agenda.

Meanwhile, a series of natural disasters and reductions in the amount of arable land also have highlighted the urgency of the problem.

Predications from China Agriculture University have shown that by 2030 when China will have a population of 1.6 billion the nation may need as much as 640-720 million tons of grain to feed its people. Now China produces 450 million tons of grain annually, and feeds around 1.3 billion people.

Meanwhile, the Agro-Meteorological Institute under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences warned that by 2030, grain production in China might decrease by up to 10 percent because of changes in temperature, if effective measures are not taken.

"Those are our long-term problems and concerns that we must face," said Liu. "The only way out is to increase per-unit yield of land in production."

The government has taken action. Last week, a national wheat breeding engineering center was set up in Xinxiang of Henan Province.

"Our aim is to make it become an international wheat breeding center since the whole world needs high-yield wheat," said Liu.

(China Daily May 11, 2005)