BEIJING (Reuters) -China issued guidelines on Friday to promote biotech cultivation, focusing on gene-editing tools and developing new wheat, corn, and soybean varieties, as part of efforts to ensure food security and boost agriculture technology.
The 2024-2028 plan aims to achieve “independent and controllable” seed sources for key crops, with a focus to cultivate high-yield, multi-resistant wheat, corn and high-oil, high-yield soybean and rapeseed varieties.
The move comes as China intensifies efforts to boost domestic yields of key crops like soybeans to reduce reliance on imports from countries such as the United States amid a looming trade war.
The document pledged to research and develop precision gene-editing tools with independent intellectual property and enhance key cultivation technologies, it said in the statement.
Additionally, efforts will be made to breed high-performance livestock, including pigs with strong reproductive capacity and high feed conversion rate, and disease-resistant broiler chickens.
(Reporting by Ella Cao and Mei Mei Chu; Editing by Kim Coghill and Christian Schmollinger)
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