http://en.people.cn/n3/2025/1126/c90000-20395261.html

Soybeans exhibit high sensitivity to day length (photoperiod) and temperature. They detect the subtle shortening of daylight and lengthening of night following the summer solstice, triggering flowering and pod formation. This inherent sensitivity typically requires 10-12 years to develop a new, high-quality soybean variety.

To accelerate this lengthy process, a team at the CAAS Institute of Cro Sciences moved their main breeding work to the Nanfan breeding base in Sanya, where light and temperature conditions make the region a natural “accelerator” for crop breeding. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, more than 70 percent of all new crop varieties have utilized Nanfan. Each winter and spring, large numbers of agricultural researchers bring breeding materials to Hainan, shortening the breeding cycle by one-third to one-half.

However, soybeans are classic short-day crops. When many northern varieties are brought to low-latitude Hainan, they flower prematurely and remain too short for essential hybridization work, the very foundation of developing improved varieties. Drawing on their understanding of the soybean biological clock, a team around Tianfu Han combined this knowledge with modern LED supplemental lighting to create an artificial “long-day” environment in Hainan. This allows northern soybean varieties — otherwise unsuited to the local climate — to grow tall and vigorous, providing strong female parents for large-scale hybridization. At the same time, the team has built China’s first core soybean pollen bank, storing collected pollen at low temperatures for year-round use. This innovation extends the hybridization window from a mere two weeks per year to year-round operation.

These breakthroughs have enabled Han’s team to develop an engineered breeding system achieving multiple annual generations under field-scale conditions. Global soybean germplasm now converges in Sanya, compressing breeding cycles from 10-12 years to approximately seven years. The team is now incorporating artificial intelligence and genomic selection into breeding processes, enhancing precision and efficiency. The two-meter soybean plant represents not just scientific achievement, but symbolizes China’s breeding industry innovation in Hainan.

Hainan is shifting from a seasonal “breeding base” into a seed-industry “Silicon Valley” that attracts top global talent and technologies. The emerging “Nanfan Silicon Valley” now features not only standardized breeding fields, but also seed laboratories, germplasm resource banks, and high-throughput phenotyping platforms. Researchers can now be stationed there year-round, carrying out full-process research and development from gene discovery to variety testing, dramatically improving breeding efficiency. This transformation will significantly strengthen China’s capacity for original innovation in the seed industry and provide a firmer germplasm foundation for safeguarding national food security.