Take a look at the new changes in the vegetable basket (Economic Focus · Fresh News from the Farmland)

(Original Title: The rise of distinctive high-quality varieties, and the ongoing improvement of the seed industry innovation system. Take a look at the new changes in the vegetable basket (Economic Focus·Fresh stories from the fields))

Soft and tender lotus root, crisp and refreshing radishes, and crisp-tender and juicy cabbages… Each dish and each vegetable adds a variety of flavors to a better life.

China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of vegetables, with more than 300 million mu planted every year. What new changes are reflected in this colorful vegetable basket? Reporters conducted interviews.

Diversified and segmented demand, building a matrix of specialty vegetables

At the Ya-Fei-Wan-Lian-Qing planting base in Anzhou District, Changzhou, Jiangsu, one after another, curled-leaf kale is thriving under the sun. “This is Ya-Fei-Wan-Lian-Qing curly-leaf greens,” said An Yanbing, the person in charge of the base. In addition to Changzhou, there are also plantings in Inner Mongolia, Hubei, Yunnan, and other places, enabling stable year-round supply.

When you take a closer look, this type of kale is not quite the same as commonly grown varieties. Its leaves are deep green and curled, covered with many wrinkles. This oddly shaped vegetable not only appears on shelves in some chain supermarkets, but also enters physical stores such as tea drink shops and hot pot restaurants.

Many years ago, when kale was first introduced to China, it encountered “unfamiliarity with the soil and climate” due to its bitter taste. Han Qia-Fei, general manager of Wuhan Ya-Fei Seed Industry Co., Ltd. in Wuhan, Hubei, introduced that the team collected and created more than 300 seed germplasm materials, and applied modern breeding technologies such as distant hybridization and molecular breeding to develop this new broccoli-derived variety. Compared with kale, it has higher levels of dietary fiber, vitamin C, folate, and more. Its taste is crisp, tender, and refreshingly sweet, meeting various needs such as stir-frying, juicing, and more. After deep processing, it can even become a wrinkled-leaf vegetable powder for healthy weight loss.

“Through our research, we found that many consumers are willing to try vegetables with unique textures, nutrition, or regional characteristics,” said Han Qia-Fei. The company is working with Huazhong Agricultural University to carry out breakthrough R&D on burdock dandelion kale, wrinkled-leaf kale, and burdock dandelion radish-green—building a matrix of specialty vegetables and an entire industrial chain.

“Vegetables account for 41% of food consumption. The rise of distinctive, high-quality vegetables reflects an increasingly upgraded demand for vegetable consumption and processing,” Zhang Yangyong, deputy chief scientist of the National Major Vegetable Industry Technology System and a researcher at the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, gave an example: The functional cucumber new variety “Zhongnong Cuiyu No. 3,” selected and bred by the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, is rich in propanediolic acid. The amount from transferring the sales agency rights of this variety exceeded 10 million yuan. Another example is the glutinous eggplant new variety “Yuzhu Siqie 881,” selected and bred by the Chongqing Academy of Agricultural Sciences. It is soft, tender, and fragrant-sweet, suitable for grilling, steaming, or stir-frying, and has already been promoted cumulatively to 40k mu in the southwestern region. “From the production side, influenced by factors such as the large-scale development of vegetable production and the reduction of rural labor, demand in the market for varieties with ideal plant type, consistent maturity, suitability for mechanized harvesting, and resistance to storage and transportation has been growing day by day,” Zhang Yangyong said.

“The vegetable basket keeps bringing new offerings. Chinese cabbage resistant to verticillium wilt, eggplants tolerant of low temperature and weak light, mechanized-harvest-suitable chili peppers, lotus root with high starch content… In the ‘14th Five-Year Plan’ period, China strengthened efforts to collect and preserve vegetable germplasm resources. In the Third National Survey of Crop Germplasm Resources, a newly collected 45k batches of vegetable germplasm resources were obtained. This created a group of excellent new vegetable germplasms, strongly supporting breeding innovation. Over the past five years, China has bred more than 6,000 quality multi-disease-resistant vegetable varieties (registered or authorized new varieties), including major vegetable varieties such as cucumber, kale, and chili peppers, as well as specialty vegetables such as mustard greens, scallions, and lotus root.”

Decoding the “life map” to help recover the “taste from memory”

“This fruit tomato is really something the child loves to eat.” In a food store in Shenzhen, Guangdong, Ms. Liu selected a box of multi-color combination cherry tomatoes. “The yellow ones are a bit sweeter, the red ones are more on the sweet-and-sour side, and the brown ones have a sandy, pithy texture. This tomato not only looks good in color, but it also has a strong flavor.”

“During long-term breeding choices for high yield, some gene loci that determine tomato flavor were lost, causing the tomato to lose the ‘taste from memory’,” said Lü Yaqing, general manager of Nongmei Agricultural Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. Relying on the Shenzhen Agricultural Genomics Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the company is committed to conducting commercial flavor breeding.

“More than 80% of the team members are master’s or PhD holders, with an average age not exceeding 35. Many participated in tomato genome sequencing while still in school, accumulating extensive experience,” Lü Yaqing said. Genome sequencing is like drawing a “life instruction manual” for the tomato. By decoding its DNA code, it reveals the genetic secrets behind how tomatoes grow, set fruit, resist disease, and what determines the sweet-and-sour flavor. Through cooperation between universities and enterprises, as well as consumer sensory feedback, the team combined biotechnology with cutting-edge research to identify more than 600 flavor substances affecting tomato taste. It successfully pinpointed 33 key gene loci and bred multiple new tomato varieties.

With advances in seed-industry technology, the decoding of vegetables’ “life maps” is accelerating. Researchers have discovered more associations between traits and genes, greatly improving the precision and efficiency of breeding.

“During the ‘14th Five-Year Plan’ period, China led the world in completing the most vegetable genome decoding. Research on vegetable genomics and trait decoding is internationally leading,” Zhang Yangyong said. The research covers major and specialty vegetables such as cucumber, Chinese cabbage, kale, lotus root, and taro. It accounts for about 70% of the total number of vegetable crops sequenced globally. It clarifies the domestication and evolutionary rules and variation patterns of certain key traits, including tomato flavor and hardness, the formation of Chinese cabbage and kale leaf balls, cucumber length and gender differentiation, and capsaicin synthesis, among others.

To get an ideal vegetable, it’s not only about breeding well—it’s also about growing it well. In the standardized testing and demonstration area in Zishan Town, Yudu County, Jiangxi, more than 20 tomato varieties focused on taste carried out systematic evaluations at the base in order to select varieties adapted to local soil and climate. “When we promote new varieties, we break down the technical steps into very fine detail to ensure we can grow tomatoes with ideal taste,” said Huang Hai, an agricultural technician from Nongmei Agricultural Technology. “Before transplanting tomato seedlings, we need to keep the seedling house closed to sterilize soil pathogens and insect eggs. We choose organic fertilizer for base dressing to ensure balanced nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, and we also need to supplement trace elements.”

“In the past, people cared more about yield when growing vegetables. Now people care more about whether they taste good, and dealers are also willing to pay for great flavor,” said Fang Xiaowei, head of the Xiannxiang Shangfang Village Shareholding Economic Cooperative in Yudu County. Since this year, each tomato harvest has been plentiful. At its busiest time, nearly 40 people are needed each day for picking.

Joint breeding breakthroughs, filling the vegetable basket with more homegrown produce

Behind the dinner table, some unseen changes are quietly taking place.

To break foreign companies’ monopoly on special cold-tolerant resources, the overwintering kale “Zhonggan 1305” is being promoted faster, with a replacement rate of 70% in the main producing area of Jiayu County, Hubei. To solve the problem of mushroom caps easily opening, the independently bred white enoki mushroom varieties have a market share of nearly 30%, which is nearly 25 percentage points higher than before the breakthroughs. A series of early- to mid-maturing, high-yield, and strongly adaptable broccoli new varieties have taken root in major producing areas such as Hebei, Zhejiang, and Yunnan, replacing large areas of imported Japanese and European varieties…

Shine the “Made-in-China” seed industry core, and the vegetable basket is steadier. Since the implementation of the seed industry revitalization action, China has increased support for national joint breeding breakthroughs. It supports provinces such as Shanghai and Zhejiang to lead the creation of breeding breakthrough teams. Together with many domestic research institutions, universities, seed companies, and extension departments, coordinated breakthroughs have been carried out to breed a batch of breakthrough varieties, pushing the domestic rate of vegetable varieties up steadily to 91%.

By opening up an integrated mechanism for production, education, research, and application, quality vegetable varieties are accelerating their move from the laboratory to the field. “We formulated standards for shared collaboration of resources and technologies. We successfully carried out re-sequencing on more than 500 spinach samples to build a gene database. Through the ‘sharing of research results + revenue sharing’ model, we facilitated multiple enterprise–research cooperation agreement signings,” said Qian Wei, head of the joint breeding breakthrough team for domestically bred hybrid spinach varieties. For example, the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, signed cooperation and promotion agreements for new spinach varieties with an enterprise. Rights are allocated according to contributions, and the “Qingbo” series of new spinach varieties was successfully released. In addition, efforts have been made to promote cross-licensing of variety rights between two units, speeding up the spinach breeding breakthrough.

“Previously, carrots were mainly sown in summer and autumn. With upgrades to varieties and facilities, now there are planting seasons throughout the year, which brings complexity to measuring comprehensive field performance,” said Zhuang Feiyun, head of the domestically bred high-quality hybrid carrot variety selection and breeding team. The team, together with planting enterprises and large growers, established precise testing and evaluation points for important traits such as black spot disease resistance and winter–spring tolerance to bolting in places including Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia; Zhengzhou, Henan; Xiaoxian County, Anhui; and Jinjiang, Fujian. This provides accurate field phenotypic data for breeders and seed companies, promoting shared use of scientific and enterprise results, and accelerating rapid transformation and implementation.

At the end of August 2025, the national platform for crop germplasm resource information launched for trial operation. A relevant person in charge from the Seed Industry Administration Division of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said that the platform mainly launched a module for sharing and utilizing crop germplasm resources. It gathers basic information such as sources and trait characteristics of tens of thousands of germplasm resources from 38 categories of crops, including corn, soybeans, and vegetables, and marks the status of resources that can be shared and utilized, routes to apply and obtain them, and the units providing the resource repositories. This greatly facilitates accurate searching and obtaining of needed germplasm resources for breeding units, seed enterprises, and researchers engaged in breeding, and helps better serve agricultural science and technology fundamental research as well as breeding innovation breakthrough efforts.

(Intern Zhu Danyang participated in reporting and writing)