Nanfei Xu
Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

As food demand steadily increases, food security become a major issue for China. Lack in adaptation of biotechnology and increase in labor cost have resulted in pervasive use of chemicals in agriculture, leading to high cost of agricultural products, reduced production and heavy environmental pollution. Because of the already high planting index, any major increase in Chinese crop production has to come from yield gains per acre per season.  Biotechnology and the integration of biotechnology into plant breeding and seed production systems are the most promising ways to help Chinese crop production. Learning the demonstrated success in some areas and frustrations in other areas of plant biotechnology experienced in major plant biotech companies, there are ways for China to take shorter paths and leap into new era of modern agricultural biotechnology.