BGI helping farmers worldwide hike yields, cut costs

Aided by technology, Chinese genomics firms such as BGI Group are helping farmers around the world increase crop yields and lower production costs.

BGI Bioverse, a subsidiary of Shenzhen, Guangdong province-based life sciences and genomics company BGI Group, is working with Yunnan University to promote genomics technology-enabled perennial rice cultivation, which reduces labor-intensive tasks and lowers the cost of production of farmers.

In 2022, the output from a field of BGI's perennial rice was more than 500 kg per mu (0.067 hectares) during the first harvest of the year in Masaka City, near Lake Victoria in Uganda.

The local climate and temperature made this an ideal crop, offering a solution that met local demand.

"Different from genetically modified rice, perennial rice takes advantage of the rice's hybridity and natural variation, without changing its genetic structure. The economic benefit of perennial rice is quite obvious. It is a preferred replacement for traditional rice," said Wang Gangyi, a professor at the College of Economics and Management at the Northeast Agricultural University.

As a leading company that exports genomics technology, BGI Group said it recognizes the importance of making technological advancements available to everyone through scientific sharing to benefit humanity.

Yin Ye, CEO and executive chairman of BGI Group, said: "We must keep cutting-edge technologies affordable, accessible, and equitable. Technology is not just for a few privileged people. It must be enjoyed by everyone on Earth."

At the University of Queensland in Australia, Robert Henry, professor of innovation in agriculture, and his team are using gene sequencing technology from BGI Group to conduct species cultivation research on macadamia nuts, also known as "Australian nuts", to shorten crop growth time and increase yield.

The price of the nut has remained high in the international market, mainly due to the serious imbalance between supply and demand. Macadamia trees take 7-10 years from planting to fruiting.

According to an estimate by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the global market demand for macadamia nuts is over 400,000 metric tons a year, while the current supply is less than 12.5 percent, or about 50,000 tons.

Henry, who is also director of the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, said: "When we plant the macadamia trees, it takes as long as eight years to produce crops, and many more years to produce an economic yield of nuts. That period of time is what we call 'lost-production time'. What we are aiming to do is to have trees to produce an economic yield in just a few years, providing an enormous economic benefit to people in the industry.

"Studying macadamias is going to teach us a lot, to have a much wider application in agriculture."

That is the reason why the university is working with BGI Group.

The Chinese company is expanding the possibilities of genomics with the quality and delivery of data, as scientists often look for one in a million plants that have a combination of characteristics to help it succeed in becoming a productive species in an agricultural and food production sense.

Henry's research uses BGI Group's sequencing technology with macadamias not only to preserve rare varieties, but also to make plants more sustainable and economically viable.

"Our objective is to find varieties with smaller trees that can be planted more closely together to allow a much more sustainable and intensified production, and that can minimize the use of land and water," Henry said.

So far, BGI Group has collaborated with institutions from more than 100 countries and regions on modern agriculture, human health and biological diversity, offering them expert and affordable clinical molecular diagnostic solutions, as well as high-throughput sequencing research services.

It is also stepping up efforts to serve more people in the world.

Wang from the Northeast Agricultural University said that exports of genomics technology by Chinese enterprises are beneficial for global scientific and technological advancement and a blessing for humanity.

"However, attention should be paid to aspects including genetic safety, diversity of species, as well as ecological ethics, to make sure technology is used in the right way," he said.

"BGI will stick to the concept of 'owned by people, done by people and shared by people', and promote the sharing of technology globally," Yin from BGI Group said.

"The scientific community is an important bridge to build a community with a shared future for humanity," said Yuan Jiangyang, a professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

zhengyiran@chinadaily.com.cn