New mutation techniques for crop improvement in China.

Abstract There are at least 1 billion hungry people worldwide and the Asia and Pacific region harbours the biggest estimated regional distribution of hunger. Lifting a billion people out of poverty and feeding more than 9 billion by 2050 will require increasing cereal production by 70%. Accelerating the development of agriculture to continually increase productivity should be the final approach to end poverty. Mutation techniques have played very significant roles in ensuring food security by developing new mutant germplasm and mutant varieties in China, which have generated a tremendous socio-economic impact. New mutagenesis approaches were initiated in the late 1980s by Chinese scientists, including spaceflight and heavy-ion beam irradiation used as new effective and alternative ways for crop genetic improvement. Protocols for crop mutation induction by space radiation with high-energy heavy-ion beams have been established and applied for crop breeding. More than 1030 mutant varieties with high-yielding, fine-quality and multi-resistant traits have been developed and officially released mainly in cereals, oil and vegetable crops. They have been playing an important role in agricultural production. Hundreds of rare mutant germplasm accessions with a possible breakthrough effect on main economic traits such as grain yield and quality were also identified and applied in conventional breeding programmes. The development of new mutation techniques will be heavily based on, and associated with, not only effective use of nuclear and aerospace research platforms, but also advanced plant omics and molecular biology.