Beijing Makes Rapid Gains Toward Seed Self-Reliance

Beijing is now realizing its long-held goal of mastering core breeding technologies. Chinese-made genotyping chips have broken the longstanding monopoly of U.S. firms and entered the breeding pipelines of leading seed companies in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Genetically modified (GM) crops are currently undergoing large-scale demonstration planting. Chinese institutions and companies control nearly all the traits in use. Within the PRC, foreign investors are barred from GM breeding, and gene editing follows a shorter approval path, which has paved the way for domestic developers to bring products to market. Artificial intelligence (AI) breeding tools developed by state research institutes and universities are entering pilot use, with broad prospects ahead. Drawing on multi-location field data from the national variety trial network, these tools will see deeper and wider application.

On September 4, at the 33rd China Beijing Seed Industry Conference, one demonstration saw a dual-arm robot pollinate tomatoes, holding a pollen tube in one hand and a pollination brush in the other (China Daily, September 7). The robot, GEAIR 2.0, comes from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). [1] The conference focused on smart breeding and featured presentations on gene editing and other frontier technologies. It exhibited 145 frontier technological achievements, including breeding chips, large artificial intelligence (AI) models, and smart phenotyping equipment with independent intellectual property rights (Xinhua, August 28, September 6).

The conference showed the latest progress in the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) push for seed self-reliance. [2] Since the Central Commission for Comprehensively Deepening Reform approved the “Seed Industry Revitalization Action Plan” (种业振兴行动方案) in 2021, the self-sufficiency rate of germplasm and staple varieties has kept rising (Xinhua, July 9, 2021). Domestically bred varieties now cover more than 95 percent of the PRC’s crop area (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs [MARA], December 17, 2025, July 27). Over the past year, the PRC has continued to push at the technological frontier of the seed industry. In 2025, the State Council issued its “Opinions on Deepening the Implementation of the ‘AI+’ Initiative” (关于深入实施“人工智能+”行动的意见), which called for efforts to accelerate innovation in AI-driven breeding; in 2026, the No. 1 Central Document went further, calling for commercialization of biotech seed breeding (生物育种产业化) and integrating AI into agricultural development (State Council, August 26, 2025; China Brief, September 21, 2025; Xinhua, February 3). Beijing is working to master the core technologies of the seed industry, and it is succeeding.

Chinese Gene Chips Challenge Foreign Suppliers

For years, the PRC’s seed industry relied heavily on imported technology for determining genetic variation, also known as genotyping. Genotyping chips, for instance, allow scientists to simultaneously identify tens of thousands of parts of a plant’s DNA. Breeders use the results to select parents, predict traits, and identify varieties. U.S. products long dominated the market, with Illumina and Affymetrix (now part of Thermo Fisher Scientific) supplying a PRC industry held back by high procurement costs and the technology gap until as late as 2024 (China Daily, May 14, 2024). In February 2025, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) placed Illumina on the PRC’s Unreliable Entity List. The following month, the ministry banned the company from exporting gene sequencers to the PRC. The ban was lifted in November 2025, but Illumina remains on the list (MOFCOM, February 4, 2025, March 4, 2025, November 5, 2025).

Around that time, import substitution for genotyping chips sped up markedly and extended to equipment and consumables. In May 2024, Suzhou Laso Biotech (Laso; 拉索生物), together with the Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, China Agricultural University, and other institutions, released a solid-phase wheat genotyping chip, claiming that the scanner, reagents, and software were all developed and produced in-house (China Daily, May 14, 2024). In October 2025, Laso, along with the Jiangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Huazhong Agricultural University, released a rapeseed genotyping chip, mastering the bead-array assembly process for solid-phase chips, a process Laso’s chairman described as “long monopolized by a few U.S. companies” (长期被少数美国公司垄断) (Science and Technology Daily, May 14). Liquid chips, which capture target DNA in solution for genotyping by target sequencing, had achieved their breakthrough earlier. Hebei-based MolBreeding (博瑞迪) says its products cover 156 species (MolBreeding, accessed September 26). Yuan Longping High-Tech Agriculture (隆平高科), Syngenta, and Dabeinong (大北农) have used them at scale in commercial breeding (Jiangsu Xinhua Daily, May 18, 2022). The industry’s depth was on display at September’s conference in Beijing, which showcased more than 50 breeding chips covering crops, livestock and poultry, aquatic species, and fruit trees (Xinhua, August 28).

Central government policy is also creating demand for genotyping chips. On July 27, MARA published an initial catalog of ten crops, including rice and wheat, that were covered under its “essentially derived variety” system (实质性派生品种制度), which allows for the modification of a seed variety for commercial purposes only with the consent of the holder of the original variety if the modification retains the essential characteristics of the original (MARA, April 23, 2023; China News Service, July 27). [3] As the catalog expands to more crops, seed companies will need high-throughput genotyping to settle variety-rights disputes, and domestic suppliers already established in the market stand to benefit (MARA, July 27).

Domestic Traits Dominate Beijing’s Biotech Crop Rollout

Genetically modified (GM) crops are the area where Beijing has pushed furthest and where domestic traits are most widely planted. Chinese institutions and companies control nearly all the traits in use throughout the PRC. Since 2008, the State Council has cultivated domestic traits through a major science and technology program, with the stated goal of “obtaining a batch of genes with important application value and independent intellectual property rights” (获得一批具有重要应用价值和自主知识产权的基因) (MARA, July 10, 2008). Since then, attention within the PRC’s seed industry has shifted from whether domestic traits exist to how well they perform. At the conference, one forum was devoted to the yields and returns of demonstration planting of domestic GM soybeans (Beijing Daily, September 3).

Cotton is an earlier example of successful import substitution in GM crops. In 1997, the PRC approved the commercialization of Bt cotton, which has built-in insect resistance. Varieties from Monsanto, as well as from Delta and Pine Land, were cleared for sale in Hebei, Shandong, Henan, and Anhui provinces. [4] According to official media, foreign Bt cotton varieties held more than 95 percent of the PRC’s Bt cotton market in 1998; Chinese-bred varieties from the Cotton Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) then overtook them, reaching a 70 percent share by 2005 (China Youth Daily, May 9, 2006). Today, PRC-bred Bt cotton varieties hold 99 percent of the PRC market (Xinhua, August 24, 2023).

For GM soybeans and corn—the two largest U.S. agricultural exports by value—foreign companies have been shut out of cultivation approvals from the start (USDA, June 30). The only companies or institutions that have been able to obtain the biosafety certificate required for these crops to be planted in the PRC are Chinese (MARA, January 21, 2020). [5]

Beijing also restricts foreign entry and crop imports through formal rules. Under the Special Administrative Measures for Foreign Investment Access (Negative List) (2024 Edition) (外商投资准入特别管理措施（负面清单）[2024年版 ]), issued by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and MOFCOM, foreign investors may not “invest in the breeding of GM varieties of crops, breeding livestock and poultry, and aquatic seedlings, or in the production of their GM seeds (seedlings)” (投资农作物、种畜禽、水产苗种转基因品种选育及其转基因种子（苗）生产) (NDRC, September 6, 2024). Foreign companies’ GM crops may be imported, but the certificates must state that the material “may be used only as processing raw material, may not be diverted to other uses, and may not be released into the environment” (只能用作加工原料，不能改变用途、不能进入环境) (MARA, December 31, 2024). By contrast, the government supports seed companies going abroad to breed, produce, and sell seed (MARA, August 30, 2021). Dabeinong’s GM soybean traits have been approved for cultivation in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay (MARA, May 20, 2025).

PRC developers keep producing new GM traits, while MARA discloses less and less about them. In May 2026, a high-oil soybean event developed by the Oil Crops Research Institute of CAAS and partners received a biosafety certificate, reportedly “the first domestic soybean event approved with high oil content as its target trait” (国内首个以高油为目标性状获批的大豆转化体) (China Science Daily, May 7). Meanwhile, the approval lists on MARA’s website stop at the end of 2024, making it harder for outsiders to see the true state of the PRC’s GM development. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has noted that the move “may raise public concerns regarding the transparency” of the PRC’s GM regulation (USDA, December 1, 2025).

Gene editing, a newer breeding technology than GM, is another area Beijing is pushing forward quickly. MARA issued the Guidelines for the Safety Evaluation of Gene-Edited Plants for Agricultural Use (Trial) (农业用基因编辑植物安全评价指南 [试行]) in January 2022 and the Review Rules for Gene-Edited Plants for Agricultural Use (农业用基因编辑植物评审细则) in 2023 (MARA, January 24, 2022). Under the rules, developers of an edited plant adding no environmental or food safety risk can apply for a production-and-application biosafety certificate directly after intermediate trials (MARA, April 28, 2023). Within two years, MARA issued ten biosafety certificates through this streamlined path. [6] On editing tools, MARA listed “Cas12-family gene-editing platform tools with independent intellectual property rights” (拥有自主知识产权的Cas12家族基因编辑底盘工具) among the scientific achievements of the 14th Five-Year Plan period, and such tools already have Western buyers: Germany’s KWS and France’s Limagrain have taken global licenses to editing tools from Shandong Shunfeng Biotechnology (舜丰生物) and Qi Biodesign (齐禾生科), respectively (KWS, September 10, 2025; MARA, December 17, 2025; Limagrain, July 31).

AI Use Accelerating in Crop Breeding

AI, the theme of the September conference, is still at an early stage in breeding, but its scale and speed of advance are already striking. Among 12 seed-industry large AI models exhibited at the event, the leading examples came from the state research system: the SeedLLM model developed jointly by the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Yazhouwan National Laboratory, and China Agricultural University; the Shennong Breeding Studio (神农育种Studio) released by China Agricultural University; and the crop phenomics big-data factory built by the Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences (Beijing Municipal Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, September 5).

These AI tools are evolving to develop automated analysis capabilities. When SeedLLM was released in 2024, it mainly answered questions about variety selection and cultivation techniques. GeneScientist, released on top of it in 2025, has since helped researchers discover dozens of previously unreported gene functions, later confirmed by experiments (Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, April 28, 2024, July 31, 2025). Shennong Breeding Studio, released during the September conference, goes a step further, reportedly bringing germplasm data and breeding analysis tools together, so researchers can describe what they need in natural language and call up data and tools for parent screening and line evaluation (Xinhua, September 8). Once such platforms spread, analytical capacity once limited to large institutions will be open to many more breeders.

Beijing holds a vast store of variety trial data, which will help to refine these tools. Under the relevant rules, new varieties of major crops must pass trials and registration before they can be promoted. This national variety trial system generates field data from multiple locations and years across the country. Data from more than 1,000 regional crop variety trial stations nationwide flow into designated platforms each year (Xinhua, September 8). The state organizes the trials and feeds the data into these platforms, unlike U.S. trial data, which remain scattered among many holders. As a result, the PRC’s models may be trained more quickly.

Conclusion

Beijing’s push for seed self-reliance has extended over the last few years from a focus on crop varieties to the technologies used in creating them. State research institutes and universities lead much of the frontier research and companies turn it into products and bring them to market, while rules such as the bar on foreign investment in GM breeding leave room in the market for domestic technology. For the foreign companies that have long supplied seed products to the PRC, the more mature the PRC’s import substitution becomes—and the more the country achieves its goal of self-reliance—the more they are likely to be squeezed out of the domestic market. They will also face increasing pressure in global markets, as the PRC’s leading seed companies follow the path set by their compatriots in the automobile, battery, and solar sectors.

Notes

[1] GEAIR is short for Genome Editing combined with AI-based Robotics; its Chinese name is “吉儿” (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, August 12, 2025). In an experiment, a team led by Xu Cao (许操) at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology used gene editing to reshape tomato flowers so the stigma is exposed, which a robot was then trained to recognize and pollinate. This method has also been used, successfully, to create male-sterile soybean lines of the kind hybrid seed production requires, plants that cannot pollinate themselves and can only receive pollen from others (Beijing Tongzhou Release, September 3). GEAIR 2.0 is now being tested and piloted in several agricultural industrial parks and may spread further (Xinhua, September 8). See: Xie et al., “Engineering crop flower morphology facilitates robotization of cross-pollination and speed breeding,” Cell 188, no. 21 (2025): 5809–5830.e27, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.07.028.

[2] China Brief has covered the PRC’s pursuit of self-reliance in seed and grain production previously. See: China Brief, June 7, 2021, June 17, 2022, May 23, 2025.

[3] Under MARA’s guidance, identification of derived varieties “gives priority to high-throughput molecular testing technologies such as SNP and MNP” (优先采用高通量分子检测技术，比如SNP、MNP) (MARA, July 27).

[4] Carl E. Pray, Jikun Huang, Ruifa Hu, and Scott Rozelle, “Five Years of Bt Cotton in China – the Benefits Continue,” The Plant Journal 31, no. 4 (2002): 424, https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-313X.2002.01401.x.

[5] Based on the approval lists MARA published for 2019–2024, counted by event, with stacked events counted separately and renewals and area expansions not double-counted: 25 corn events and 10 soybean events. China National Seed Group (中国种子集团) holds five corn events, four of them (Bt11, GA21, the MIR162 series, and MZIR260) Syngenta events; ChemChina acquired Syngenta in 2017, and Syngenta now belongs to Sinochem Holdings. The lists are in the approvals section of MARA’s GM information column (MARA, accessed September 26).

[6] Based on the approval lists MARA published for 2023–2024: ten production-and-application biosafety certificates for gene-edited crops, five for soybeans, two for corn, two for wheat, and one for rice. The first went in April 2023 to Shandong Shunfeng Biotechnology for a high-oleic soybean, and most are held by Shunfeng and Qi Biodesign (MARA, April 28, 2023, January 18, 2024, May 8, 2024, December 31, 2024).