Ru Zhengang, the maker of ＂anti-fate wheat＂： what you want all your life is a bumper harvest.

Image source: China Radio Network

CCTV News:"Family, less idle month, people twice as busy in June. At night, the south wind rises and the wheat is covered with yellow. " It’s the wheat harvest season in a year. Under the blue sky in the distance, golden wheat waves are surging. The newly harvested wheat is ground into fragrant flour and enters the kitchens of various households. ……

One out of every eight steamed buns eaten by more than 1.3 billion people in China comes from the wheat variety "Bainong Aikang 58", which is known as "the first wheat in Huanghuai". It is "Mai Da" Ru Zhengang who successfully cultivated this new wheat variety. He is the vice president of the School of Life Science and Technology of Henan University of Science and Technology, the director of the Henan Hybrid Wheat Engineering Technology Research Center, and the chief expert of wheat disease and pest resistance breeding in Henan Province.

Ru Zhengang often said: "As an agricultural science and technology worker, you can’t help farmers increase production and income. You are nothing!" His lifelong aspiration is to fill the granary of China with the power of science and technology.

Change the world with a "go against the sky wheat seed"

Food is scarce and farming is difficult. These childhood memories make Ru Zhengang have an indescribable feeling for wheat. He has always had a "wheat dream", "We must have enough food in Chinese, and the granary is full of our own wheat".

In 1981, Ru Zhengang, who graduated from agronomy, was selected by Professor Huang Guangzheng, a national expert who was famous in the breeding field at that time and won the second prize of national invention, and "pulled into" the breeding industry. Since then, it has been persistent for 36 years.

In order to find the root of the problem of wheat growth, Ru Zhengang ate and lived in the wheat field for several days. In order to ensure the accuracy of the data, he took the research team to manually thresh one by one; In order to understand the growth of wheat in various places, he traveled almost every wheat producing area in China.

In the process of breeding new wheat varieties such as "Aikang 58", Ru Zhengang explored and created a set of nearly complete scientific methods, theoretical systems and scientific research equipment and breeding platform established from it. In his breeding base, from the molecular biology laboratory to the artificial climate room, to the intelligent greenhouse, and then to the outdoor experimental field, it takes only a few minutes to be fully prepared. It is these few minutes’ path that shortens the time of wheat breeding by six years.

Ruzhengang successively cultivated and popularized many varieties such as "Bainong 62", "Bainong 64", "Bainong 160" and "Bainong Aikang 58", and the wheat varieties with stable and high yield filled the granaries of China, which also made the people happy. Ruzhengang has become an out-and-out "God of Grain".

The inspiration for scientific research propositions comes from ordinary people.

"All my scientific research topics and the inspiration and source of technological innovation come from ordinary people." Ru Zhengang traveled all over the country in most wheat fields, and no matter where he went, he never forgot to ask the villagers to "find fault" with their own seeds.

Can wheat be high-yielding and lodging-resistant? Can wheat be planted whenever it wants? The ears of wheat are big, can you make more grains? There are too many ears, can you make the straw shorter? The wheat straw is short, can it tolerate barren and drought? … … Seemingly harsh problems are thrown at him from time to time, and if Ru Zhengang gets the treasure, it will eventually turn into his most breakthrough and creative scientific research topic.

Many experts believe that the wheat yield in Huanghuai area of China has reached the "ceiling", and it is "even more difficult" to further increase the yield. Ru Zhengang’s thoughts and vision jumped to the northeast and Guangdong, Fujian and other places, hoping to find a record-breaking "artifact" in these places.

He constantly challenges himself and his limits. "Even though the frost of time has stained my temples and the knife of years has carved my forehead, why don’t I change my mind and be as heroic as yesterday?" Ru Zhengang expressed his ambition to charge for hybrid wheat breeding in poetic language.

Loving wheat is like your own daughter.

Ru Zhengang said that after 36 years of research, Wheat is actually like his daughter. It can understand his words, and he knows how it can be good, what it likes, what it doesn’t like, and how to make it happy.

"When you chat with wheat with your heart, you can feel the power of its life. Although the breeding work has to face failure 90% of the time, every improvement is an exploration of life and a spiritual enjoyment." Ru Zhengang said.

In Ru Zhengang’s view, wheat that can give people full returns, like wheat, is not wheat, but wheat of a work of art.. He wants to cultivate better wheat varieties, serve the strategic needs of modern agricultural production and national food security, and make new contributions to China’s food security and agricultural harvest. (Source: Ministry of Science and Technology)