Grade: The second prize
Winners: Zhang Shaoling, Li Xiugen, Wang Yingtao, Wu Jun, Wu Huaqing, Yang Jian, Li Yong, Wang Long, Li Xiao, and Wang Suke.
Pear is one of the three major fruits in China, with a yield accounting for 65% of the total yield in the world, and an important position in structural adjustment in the planting industry. Pear is a self-incompatibilty fruit tree, which must be helped by planting pollinating trees or artificial pollination for desired fruit yield and quality. Statistics show that about five million mu of pear trees have to be hand-pollinated with a labor cost of over 600 million RMB each year. Therefore, breeding and cultivating self-compatibility varieties is one of the important issues in pear production. However, breeding and cultivating new pear varieties requires long period, with multiple difficulties. This program was aimed at the problems of extreme shortage of germplasms of self-compatibility pear and unavailable technological systems of creating and identifying the germplasms, have made important progress through collaborative innovation.
(1) They have created a technological system of large-scale identification of self-compatibility pear germplasms and S-genotype; have developed methods for identifying the degree of self-compatibility by in vitro pollination; have assayed 500 copies of pear germplasms collected at home and abroad and have found four self-compatibility germplasms; have established a technological system of identifying self-incompatible genotypes of pear and have determined the S-genotypes of 144 pear varieties which accounting for 54% of the determined genotypes in the world, so that farmers do not need to base on their practical experience or percentage fertile fruit by field pollination; and have explored and cloned 21 new S-gene of pear, accounting for 46% of the genes reported in the world.
(2) They have invented a new method for creating new germplasms of self-compatibility pear varieties, established a molecular marker-assistant selected pear breeding system, and created 11 new germplasms; have developed the genetic linkage map of pear, locating 72 QTL sites for fruit traits, of which 11 are dominant QTL sites; have developed nine molecular marks applicable to pear breeding, including self-compatibility, fruit quality traits and scab resistance; have combined hybrid breeding and molecular marker-assistant selected techniques to establish a system for pear breeding which achieving early selection the seedling. They have created 11 new gerplasms with self-compatibility and good comprehensive characteristics, such as ’99-6-33’ and ’98-19-1’.
(3) They have hybridized and successfully bred four new pear varieties, ‘Zhongli No. 1’, ‘Zaoguan’, ‘Zaomeisu’ and ‘Ningcui’, which showed self-compatibility, high-quality and early-mature. Two of the four varieties have been passed state examination, and the other two have been awarded the property rights of new variety. Altogether the four breed varieties accounting for the four fifths of all the hybridized self-compatibility pear varieties in the world. These new varieties are of strong stress resistance, high yield, high quality, early maturity, and so on.
(4) They have developed related key technologies for standardized production of the new pear varieties that accelerates the extension and cultivation of the new varieties; have set up eight standards for high quality production, such as grafting, bagging and so on; have published twelve monographs on pear science; have extended cultivation of the new pear varieties in the whole country with an area that accounts for 95% of the total area in the world for growing self-compatibility pear varieties and 35% of the total area of early mature varieties in the country, achieving the purpose of widely growing the self-compatibility, high-quality, early mature pear varieties.
(5) They systematic studied on the mechanisms of self-incompatibility in pear, laying the foundation for creating germplasms of self-compatible pear; have published 146 research papers, including 31 SCI papers being cited for 147 times. Five of the SCI papers have been published in high-impact-factor journals and push forward the study in fruit science.
The program have won five awards issued by the Jiangsu province government and related ministries of the central government, and four patents issued by the central government; have bred four new pear varieties that have passed the state or provincial examination including two of which have variety rights. The growth of these new pear varieties covers 931, 000 mu of farmland in over 20 pear production provinces in China, increase of 5.29 billion RMB of income for farmers and save 1.32 billion RMB expenditure at the same time. To sum up, the research results of this program have helped solve the international issues of scarce germplasms of self-compatibility pear, low efficiency in creating new germplasms, slow extension of new technology for pear cultivation. These results have made great contribution to China in adjusting the structure of pear variety pattern in the country, increasing income for farmers, and promoting the sustainable development of pear industry and research in fruit science.
