Amidst dazzling lights, like a cluster of fresh flowers, he received the certificate for the 2006 National Highest Science and Technology Award from the country's leaders, becoming the tenth recipient of this honor in China. He is none other than Li Zhensheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Food security is the cornerstone of maintaining social stability and economic development, and Li Zhensheng has dedicated his life to addressing the issue of food supply for the Chinese people. At the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the Institute), where he works, he is affectionately known as "Academician Lao Li."
"Academician Lao Li" is a diligent worker in the fields of wheat, unafraid of hardship or difficulties. Over 31 years, he remained steadfast in Shaanxi, cultivating disease-resistant and high-yielding distant hybrid wheat. Hailing from a peasant family, he proposed large-scale agricultural projects such as the "Yellow-Huai-Hai Campaign" and the "Bohai Granary Plan," significantly increasing China's grain output. He also served as the "whistleblower" for China's grain "crises" several times, playing a crucial role in ensuring national food security through his "technological backbone."
"Teacher Li rarely thinks of himself; he has always been concerned about national affairs, always thinking about ensuring that everyone has enough to eat and a good life." His disciple and colleague, Mu Sumei, a retired researcher at the Shijiazhuang Institute of Modern Agriculture of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with the China Science Daily.
Rooted in the wheat fields, ensuring people don't go hungry
Li Zhensheng was born into an ordinary farming family in Shandong. During his childhood, consecutive droughts struck, and people in the village consumed even elm leaves and bark due to starvation. His father suffered from severe stomach illness due to hunger and passed away when Li was 13, leaving a deep impression on him about the preciousness of food.
In 1948, having completed his second year of high school, Li Zhensheng decided to drop out to alleviate the burden on his family and sought work in the newly liberated Jinan. At that time, an enrollment notice from Shandong Agricultural College offering "free room and board" caught his attention. He passed the entrance exam and embarked on the path of wheat breeding. After graduating in 1951, Li Zhensheng was assigned to work at the Genetic and Breeding Experimental Station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. In 1956, responding to the call for support for the construction of Northwest China, he was transferred to the Northwest Institute of Agricultural Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Yangling, Shaanxi.
In the 1950s, the devastating wheat stem rust disease consumed more than 12 billion kilograms of grain annually, exacerbating the hunger crisis in China.
In Yangling, Li Zhensheng witnessed the horrors of stem rust disease: walking through the wheat fields in dark trousers would turn them yellow, and many farmers would cry bitterly in the fields.
Wheat stem rust disease had a huge impact, reducing wheat yields by 30% to 50% or even causing complete crop failure once infected. It took about 8 years to breed disease-resistant new varieties through hybridization with foreign resistant wheat and local wheat, but the rust disease would render these "inbred" new varieties vulnerable again in just an average of 5 and a half years.
How could this fatal flaw of breeding speed lagging behind the rate of pathogen mutation be overcome?
After much contemplation, Li Zhensheng boldly proposed: Could a wheat variety with strong disease resistance be bred through hybridization with grass?
"Wheat has been artificially cultivated for thousands of years, like flowers in a greenhouse; wild grasses in nature, through natural selection, constitute an excellent gene pool for disease resistance," he thought.
Li Zhensheng's proposal received support from the authoritative botanist Wen Honghan and plant pathologist Li Zhenqi at the time. He led a team of young scientists to tackle the issue of "distant hybridization" between grass and wheat.
There were three major challenges in conducting distant hybridization: cross-incompatibility, making hybridization difficult to achieve; hybrid sterility, where offspring, like mules from a horse and a donkey, are infertile; and "crazy segregation" of offspring, making it difficult to maintain disease resistance traits. They tackled these challenges by selecting 12 out of hundreds of grass species for hybridization with wheat, discovering that the progeny of Leymus racemosus grew the best; Leymus racemosus flowered later than wheat, so they used supplementary lighting to adjust its flowering period, allowing it to flower two months earlier and successfully pollinate; sometimes, a hybrid looked promising, but the next generation was completely different, so they repeated the process of identification and selection time and again.
In 1978, the fruits of Li Zhensheng's team's 22-year struggle were born amidst the roaring spring of reform and opening up. The high-yielding, disease-resistant, and high-quality Leymus series of wheat varieties they bred showed promising results in initial production and promotion applications, earning them recognition at the National Science Conference.
In the blink of an eye, Li Zhensheng went from being a young man of twenty to "Lao Li" nearing fifty. But he received the highest praise from Shaanxi farmers: "To eat noodles, plant Leymus!"
In particular, the Leymus No. 6 they bred not only exhibited good resistance to the eight prevalent physiological races of stem rust at the time, but also resistance to hot dry wind, drought resistance, and stable yields. From variety approval in 1981 to winning the National First Prize for Invention in 1985, in just five years, it was promoted on an accumulated area of 24 million mu, setting a precedent for large-scale promotion of distant hybrid wheat breeding in production. It also became an important backbone parent of Chinese wheat breeding, with more than 80 derivative varieties.
Starting in 1978, Li Zhensheng also created a new system for breeding blue-grained wheat and chromosomal engineering, shortening the process of distant hybridization breeding, which originally took decades, to just 3 years, opening up a new path for practical technology. This original achievement also attracted the 1986 inaugural International Symposium on Plant Chromosome Engineering to be held in Xi'an, further expanding the influence of Chinese wheat genetic breeding internationally.
"Begin with interest, end with perseverance," Li Zhensheng highly regards this saying from Gu Yanwu. It also epitomizes his decades-long dedication to breeding work.
Li Zhensheng. Image provided by the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology
Never stopping, striving to increase the country's grain output
In 1987, Li Zhensheng bid farewell to Yangling and became the Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, transitioning from a hands-on farmer in the wheat fields to a strategist planning China's wheat production. He stepped forward during several food "crises" in China.
At that time, China's grain production hovered around 800 billion kilograms for three consecutive years, while the population grew by nearly 50 million. The Party and the government were eager to find solutions to break this stagnation. Li Zhensheng, together with agricultural experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, conducted a three-month investigation and proposed a plan to improve the productivity of low-yield fields in the Huang-Huai-Hai region.
"When pushing forward any agenda, we often say, 'Without typical cases in hand, no one will listen'," Li Zhensheng said. In order to find vivid examples, he led a team to conduct surveys across the Huang-Huai-Hai region, traveling day and night, visiting places like Fengqiu in Henan, Luancheng and Nanpi in Hebei, Yucheng in Shandong, and Mengcheng in Anhui. Through repeated field investigations, he gradually formulated a plan.
Li Zhensheng's daughter, Li Bin, recalls that during one year when he was writing a research report, her father stayed up late every night. It seemed like he was pondering even in his dreams, as he would wake up and immediately jot down any problems he thought of under the glow of his desk lamp. During that time, the light in his bedroom often glimmered in the middle of the night or early morning.
In February 1988, with the support of Zhou Guangzhao, the then President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Li Zhensheng led more than 400 scientists from 25 research institutes of the Academy to collaborate with local scientists in the Huang-Huai-Hai region to carry out extensive work to improve the productivity of low-yield fields. China's grain output increased from 800 billion kilograms to 900 billion kilograms, with an additional 50.48 billion kilograms produced in the Huang-Huai-Hai region alone.
During several instances of stagnant grain production in China, Li Zhensheng timely sounded the alarm and proposed measures to increase production.
From 1991 to 1994, China's grain production stagnated for four years. In 1995, Li Zhensheng led an expert group from the Chinese Academy of Sciences to investigate and write a report titled "Issues, Potential, and Strategies for Chinese Agricultural Production."
From 1999 to 2003, China's grain production decreased continuously for five years. In 2004, Li Zhensheng delivered a speech titled "Issues, Causes, and Strategies for Chinese Grain Production" at the "China Science and Humanities Forum," analyzing the reasons for the five consecutive years of production decline and proposing suggestions to achieve a three-year recovery in grain production.
At the Boao Forum in 2005, Li Zhensheng refuted one by one the arguments made by the American economist Lester Brown in his article "Who Will Feed China" published ten years ago, and boldly proposed the idea of "Chinese people feeding themselves," providing scientific basis for China's peaceful rise in the field of agriculture.
His significant scientific innovations and the implementation of agricultural strategies led to Li Zhensheng being elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991 and receiving the highest national science and technology award in 2006.
However, he did not stop there.
"New China provided me with food and the opportunity to attend university, things I never dared to dream of in the past," Li Zhensheng said. "The country has nurtured me, and I should repay the country."
In 2013, at the age of 82, Li Zhensheng organized and implemented the "Bohai Granary" plan, which, after five years of hard work, increased grain production by over 20 billion kilograms in the Bohai Rim region.
In 2020, nearing the age of 90, Li Zhensheng once again proposed the idea of building a "Coastal Grass Belt" to ensure China's feed grain security.
Li Zhensheng is observing wheat. Image provided by the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology.
Cherishing food, never saying "the food is not good"
When it comes to food, Li Zhensheng always cherishes and respects it. In Li Bin's impression, his father never said any meal was "not good".
During his time in Shaanxi, Li Zhensheng always got along well with the farmers. People in Shaanxi like to eat noodles, and at that time, a typical meal for farmers would consist of a basin of noodles, a small dish of vinegar, a small dish of chili powder, and a small dish of coarse salt. Li Zhensheng could easily adapt to this type of meal and advised his disciple Mu Sumei, who was new to rural Shaanxi, to "add a few grains of salt, some vinegar, some chili, and it will taste great."
Later, in Beijing, when their lab ordered food after meetings, he often only ordered a bowl of beef noodles, fearing he "wouldn't be able to finish more." After finishing his meal at the canteen in Changping Breeding Base Farm, he would worry about not being able to finish it all, so he would ask his students to take some before he ate, ensuring that there was not a single grain of rice left on his plate, and he expected his students to do the same.
"China feeds nearly 20% of the world's population with only 9% of the world's arable land. This is not easy," he said.
In the eyes of his colleagues and students, "Old Li," who cherishes food and strives to grow good crops, is very studious.
At the age of 64, Li Zhensheng sought advice from academician Shen Yungang and academician Kuang Tingyun on the knowledge and research methods related to photosynthesis in order to carry out high-efficiency breeding. When he heard that the stomata of leaves would close at noon, he went to the field with Academician Kuang to observe the leaves under the sun.
He learned English at the age of 40, computer at 50, and started using WeChat for communication in his 80s, never neglecting anything. After the age of 90, when he couldn't go to the fields personally, he used WeChat to inquire about the progress of work on the "coastal grass zone" from his student and deputy researcher at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Li Hongwei.
Li Zhensheng believes that in order to achieve some results in his scientific career, besides having a sense of social responsibility, perseverance, relying on collective efforts and teamwork, there must be clear goals.
In today's Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, many scientists remember the saying he once said: "In scientific research, we should 'aim for big birds' rather than just catching 'a bunch of sparrows'."
Li Zhensheng often encourages students to overcome difficulties and do more important things. Zheng Qi, deputy researcher at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, inherited Li Zhensheng's legacy and created a small wheat germplasm bank and cultivated new varieties of salt-resistant and drought-resistant wheat according to Li Zhensheng's requirements. When Zheng Qi encountered setbacks when planting wheat strains selected for water and fertilizer in the northern winter wheat area in dry and thin land in the Huanghuai wheat area, he encouraged her with a phrase he had written to her before: "When you reach the end of the water, sit and watch the clouds rise."
"A person's energy and time are limited, and what can be done in one's lifetime is limited, so goals must be clear and focused," Li Zhensheng said.
Li Zhensheng chose slender wild barley as the main target for hybridization with wheat and conducted systematic research. Image provided by the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology.
