Shenzhen announced several measures to build a pilot agriculture technology innovation demonstration zone, sources from the Municipal Market Supervision and Regulation Bureau said Monday.
The measures echo the newly unveiled China’s “No. 1 central document,” which calls for more support to modern agriculture by science, technology and equipment.
To establish an agriculture demonstration zone in Shenzhen is conducive to developing agricultural science and technology industry and ensuring food security, as part of the city’s efforts to build itself into a pilot demonstration area of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Shenzhen is one of the first cities to develop the biological breeding industry. In 2010, Shenzhen National Agricultural Science and Technology Park (SZNASTP) was built with the Ministry of Science and Technology’s approval. SZNASTP focuses on biological breeding projects and has attracted many internationally and domestically well-known biological breeding teams, including Yuan Longping’s hybrid rice team.
SZNASTP also witnessed the establishment of Biological Breeding Innovation Institute at Shenzhen and Agricultural Genomics Institute in Shenzhen. Both institutions are administrated by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Shenzhen has cultivated and incubated a number of influential seed companies. It has set up seven academician workstations, 46 innovation platforms, 51 key laboratories and six innovation public service platforms. Since 2012, the city’s modern agricultural bio-industry support program has subsidized 163 biological breeding projects with a total of 263 million yuan (US$40.71 million), which has driven social investment of 1.36 billion yuan.