Inventor's bag of octoploid triticale in China

In the 1940s, Bao decided to apply cytogenetics theory to open up a new way of crop breeding through breeding practice and basic theory discussion. The determination of this scientific research goal was not accidental and smooth, but he made his own choice in the face of fierce international genetic school disputes. At that time, Mendel-Morgan genetics was criticized by biologists headed by lysenko in the Soviet Union and China. Bao analyzed the theories and arguments of the two factions, and combined with his own practice, he thought that the chromosome composed of Morgan's key genes was indeed the material basis for the transmission of biological genetic traits. The law of chromosome variation is the internal cause of species variation. Grasping the variation law of chromosomes and using favorable variation can improve crop varieties. Bao got important enlightenment from the natural development history of common wheat. He is convinced that according to the natural hybridization between tetraploid wheat and diploid Aegilops tauschii, the number of chromosomes in the hybrid naturally doubles and eventually evolves into hexaploid wheat, and artificial evolutionary breeding technology can be explored. This is a sexual hybridization between wheat and rye, and then the number of cell chromosomes of the hybrid is artificially doubled, and two species of different genera are artificially merged into a new species, and new wheat crops are cultivated by using the artificial new species to serve the development of grain production. He believes that this polyploid breeding method has a theoretical basis, so he boldly engages in breeding practice, and has published eight papers in domestic and foreign publications, including Inheritance of Dwarf Wheat, Genetic Review of Pentploid Wheat Hybrids, and Meiosis Mismatch Gene of Common Wheat.

/kloc-in the autumn of 0/947, I went to California Institute of Technology for postgraduate study, majoring in chemical genetics. Through study and scientific research, he further realized that polyploid breeding has broad application prospects. In higher plants, at least half of the substances are formed by naturally doubling the number of chromosomes. Polyploid breeding by artificially doubling the number of chromosomes according to the evolution law of natural species has become the practice of artificial evolution of species, which can be used to quickly manufacture new species and cultivate new excellent crops.

/kloc-in the autumn of 0/950, Bao returned to China and focused on polyploid breeding of triticale, barley, rye, rice and other cereal crops in Sichuan Agricultural Institute. In two years, he and his assistant Yan obtained the first batch of polyploid original species. During the period of 1954, gratifying progress has been made in improving new polyploid varieties by polyploid interspecific hybridization, and new polyploid varieties with high yield and good quality in China are expected to succeed.

However, the wind of "lysenkoism" came to China to criticize Morgan's genetics. They not only besieged him and engaged in "reactionary Morganism tricks", but also destroyed his scientific research materials and achievements, and polyploid breeding was banned. Bao insists on the truth and thinks that polyploid breeding is an artificial evolution science of species founded by human beings according to the evolution law of natural species. He argued under high pressure and wrote to the Ministry of Agriculture, strongly demanding the resumption of polyploid breeding. His complaint was taken seriously by Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China and the Ministry of Agriculture, and polyploid breeding research was resumed. 1In June, 956, Science Bulletin, the journal of China Academy of Sciences, published an editorial, in which it commented on the typical incident of "package suppression" and demonstrated the importance and urgency of implementing the policy of letting a hundred schools of thought contend in scientific undertakings. On August 25th of the same year, People's Daily published Bao's signed article "Before and After We Studied Polyploidy", which showed the party newspaper's support for scientists under pressure. Science Press also published "Autopolyploid and Diploid of Cereal Crops" co-authored by Bao Heyan.

At that time, in order to find a substitute for colchicine (high import cost), they made a series of comparative tests of various domestic drugs, and found a cheap and easily available drug-Fuminlong in 196 1, which can replace colchicine. The efficiency of seed production has been greatly improved due to the technical innovation of artificially doubling the number of chromosomes and simplifying the seed production procedure. The original seed of triticale can only produce one or two hundred a year, and it can produce more than two thousand three hundred a year. They have been producing more than 4700 octoploid triticale seeds, which is estimated to be 10 times of the total number of octoploid triticale seeds produced abroad in the same period. They used this batch of rich breeding materials made by themselves to continuously prepare thousands of hybrid combinations, which were strictly screened from generation to generation, and gradually solved the problems of low seed setting rate and insufficient seeds of triticale. By 1966, improved varieties of artificial new crops such as Triticale No.2 and Triticale No.3 which can be used for production have been basically cultivated. At the same time, Bao summarized the research experience and lessons of foreign counterparts, carried out different types of indica-japonica hybridization, produced a large number of tetraploid rice breeding materials, and achieved gratifying results in the improvement of tetraploid rice characters.

The successful cultivation of triticale not only added a new kind of flour and rice and wheat crops to China, but also conducted an experiment to artificially accelerate the evolution of wheat, which broke through the limitation that general breeding methods can only cultivate varieties with little difference within the same species, and opened up a new way for crop breeding in China. Foreign breeders have also tried to successfully cultivate octoploid triticale with excellent quality traits, but it is too difficult. Since 1970s, they began to cultivate hexaploid triticale, Bao and his assistants. With their successful practice and more than 20 original scientific papers, China's allooctoploid triticale breeding has leapt to the world leading level.

At present, hexaploid wheat has experienced more than 8000 years from natural hybridization between tetraploid wheat and diploid Aegilops tauschii to natural doubling of chromosome number of hybrid cells, and then adaptation and improvement. However, it took Bao more than 20 years to successfully manufacture and cultivate a new wheat variety triticale. What a rapid artificial evolution!

Just at the critical moment when Bao intends to identify, demonstrate and popularize triticale, the "Cultural Revolution" began, and his breeding and scientific research risks were devastated. When he was persecuted, he still tried his best to preserve precious breeding materials and personally went to the northwest and southwest to promote improved varieties such as Triticale No.2 and Triticale No.3. After several years, the planting area has reached more than 400,000 mu. The broad masses of people in alpine mountainous areas have high-quality food crops, flour and rice. On July 25th, 1975, Xinhua News Agency reported the story of Bao and his colleagues cultivating triticale with the title of "Climbing the peak bravely-recording the story of China agricultural scientists successfully cultivating allotrope octoploid triticale". Immediately, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry held a national on-the-spot meeting to further promote triticale, a new crop.

In the 1970s, Bao and his assistant began to cultivate short octoploid triticale varieties with early maturity, high yield, high quality and easy threshing, while popularizing the first generation triticale varieties such as Triticale No.2 and Triticale No.3. After 10 years' efforts, they achieved the breeding goal and successfully cultivated the second generation triticale varieties such as Jinsong No.5 and Jinsong No.22.. The outstanding characteristics of these improved varieties are stable yield, high quality, poor soil resistance, easy threshing and powdery mildew resistance. The large-scale popularization in hilly areas of western Guizhou shows that the second generation triticale varieties play an important role in the development of flour and rice crops in hilly dryland of China.

Later, Bao and his assistant made persistent efforts to cultivate the third generation of short rye varieties. They have mastered enough octoploid triticale dwarf variety resources and selected some breeding materials with plant height similar to that of ordinary winter wheat. In order to speed up the cultivation of the third generation dwarf rye varieties suitable for popularization in China's main wheat producing areas, they established the identification, breeding, experiment and demonstration base of dwarf rye in Nanyang, Henan Province, China's main wheat producing areas, and carried out the research on accelerating the optimization of breeding, thus cultivating the third generation dwarf rye varieties.

Octoploid triticale is a new artificial wheat crop initiated in China, which is superior to wheat, the main grain crop with the largest planting area in the world, because of its good quality, strong stress resistance and strong disease resistance. With the breeding of the third generation of dwarf rye, triticale will expand from alpine mountain area and hilly dry land to the main wheat producing area in plain, and its application prospect will be more and more broad.

According to Darwin's theory of species evolution, the evolution process of crop varieties can only be gradual, not sudden; Artificial cannot create new species, but can only be improved within the scope of the original species; It is impossible for artificially cultivated crop varieties to evolve into new species in a short time. Polyploid breeding can cause species mutation and produce new species, which develops Darwin's theory of species gradual change with powerful facts and opens up a new world of artificially manufacturing new species and rapidly cultivating new crops.

The book Autopolyploid and Diploid of Cereal Crops is a summary of early polyploid breeding of Bao Heyan. The experimental results show that all artificial polyploids, whether homologous or heterologous, have serious problems such as decreased seed setting rate and insufficient seeds. The seed setting rate of tetraploid indica rice is generally much higher than that of japonica rice, and the seed setting rate of tetraploid indica-japonica hybrid is higher. This shows that the problem of seed plumpness and seed setting rate of artificial polyploid can be solved by extensive hybridization among polyploid varieties. This prediction was confirmed in autotetraploid rice and allooctoploid triticale in 1960s.

China Octoploid Triticale (China Scientific Progress (B) Volume 3) is a summary of 40 years' research on octoploid triticale. This paper summarizes the methods, experiences and innovations of mass production of octoploid triticale original seeds, as well as the views on the inheritance of wheat and rye hybrids. At the same time, the characteristics and main achievements of triticale breeding in three stages were systematically expounded. The popularization and experience and lessons of the bred varieties in each stage were also briefly explained. This is a field record of the early development history of octoploid triticale in China.

(From middle school textbooks, biologists and physicians)