■ Hainan Daily Reporter Qiu Jianghua
Vehicles passed by at high speed, and outside the car window, patches of green fields came into view. Near Miaolin Tianyang, Tianya District, Sanya City, 68-year-old Zhang Mengchen, director of the Huanghuaihai Key Laboratory of Soybean Biology and Genetic Breeding of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, has been walking for decades on the nearly one-kilometer path from the experimental station to the experimental field.
went from going to Tianyang on foot to now using crutches or taking a car. Although the method has changed, his goal remains the same, "to make good use of Hainan's southern propagation resources and breed high-quality soybean varieties for China." From Hebei to Hainan, from youth to Huafa, Zhang Mengchen has always been around soybeans. People close to him once commented that he is a "silly bean": "You are so stupid, you have been dealing with soybeans for your whole life!"
In a farmland in Sanjiang Town, Meilan District, Haikou City, a farmer watered bean seedlings. . Photographed by Hainan Daily reporter Yuan Chen
The road to southern prosperity started in 1982
Born in a rural village by Hengshui Lake in Hebei Province, Zhang Mengchen has a deep affection for the land. He told reporters that in the past, his family had little labor and life was very tight. "I still remember that my grandma had bad teeth and wanted to eat tofu during the Chinese New Year, but there were no soybeans at home, so she couldn't satisfy her wish." This made Zhang Mengchen feel very uncomfortable.
Chinese people like to eat soy foods. Soybeans, also known as soybeans, were called Shu in ancient times. They originated in China and have been cultivated for thousands of years. They play an important role in the agricultural field. However, in the past few decades, domestically produced soybeans could not fully meet domestic demand and had to be imported in large quantities from abroad.
"In the final analysis, our seeds are 'stuck', and the yield and quality are quite different from those of European and American countries." Zhang Mengchen said that my country's soybean yield per acre is only about two-thirds of that of foreign countries.
After attending college, Zhang Mengchen determined to breed high-quality and high-yielding soybean varieties in China. In Hebei, soybeans can only be planted once a year. In order to carry out several generations of experimental breeding and shorten the breeding years, it is imperative to carry out southern propagation and additional generations in Hainan. In 1982, 26-year-old Zhang Mengchen came to Hainan for the first time after graduating from university.
Planting, weeding, fertilizing; harvesting, threshing, and drying. To outsiders, Zhang Mengchen looks more like a farmer in a white coat than a researcher - he stays in the fields almost every day from planting to harvesting.
For more than 40 years, Zhang Mengchen has been "following soybeans" like a migratory bird every year. He comes to Hainan for breeding appointments in winter and spring, and brings the mature seeds back to Hebei for research the following summer. Zhang Mengchen's lover said to him: "You are closer to soybeans than to me and my children!"
In the early years, the conditions in Nanfan were difficult, and Zhang Mengchen knew it deeply. "We young people came back from working in the fields and had to cook three meals a day." He recalled that it was rainy in Hainan, so we had to prepare more dry firewood, otherwise we would run out of food on rainy days. On sunny days, outdoor ultraviolet rays are very strong. They often work in the sun and get a tan.
Far away from home, Zhang Mengchen spends less time with his relatives and more distance. Fortunately, his family members understand and support him, allowing him to devote all his energy to breeding.
"There were no phone calls before, so we relied on letters to communicate." Zhang Mengchen recalled that one year, he couldn't go back during the New Year, and he felt guilty. Unexpectedly, my father took the initiative to write me a letter saying that I don’t have to worry about my family and can get the “Zhengqi Bean” out in Hainan as soon as possible! This moved Zhang Mengchen very much.
Selecting and breeding a batch of high-quality soybean varieties
Anyone involved in agriculture knows how difficult it is to select and breed a variety. This is like finding a needle in a haystack. There are too many uncertainties, and it often takes ten thousand times of effort, but the chance of success is only one in ten thousand, or even nothing.
Soybeans have a "strange temper": no matter how good the seeds are, the yield will easily decrease if the location is changed; as the yield increases, the protein and oil content will easily decrease. To cultivate soybean seeds with high yield, high quality and good adaptability, it depends on the "temper" of soybeans and the efforts of researchers.
Domestic soybeans cannot fully meet domestic demand, and arable land resources are limited, so soybean planting cannot be expanded indefinitely. Therefore, cultivating high-quality soybean varieties with high and stable yields through technological innovation has become the goal of Zhang Mengchen and his team.
In the 1990s, Zhang Mengchen cultivated early-maturing and high-yielding summer soybean varieties represented by "Jidou No. 7", rewriting the history of low-yielding summer soybeans with two crops a year and significantly increasing summer soybean yields. For this, he won the National Science and Technology Progress Award ;
At the beginning of the 21st century, Zhang Mengchen bred the high-yielding and widely adaptable "Jidou No. 12". This was the country's first high-protein soybean variety approved and promoted across spring and summer ecological zones, laying the foundation for the subsequent cultivation of high-yielding and high-quality soybeans. According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, "Jidou No. 12" has been the high-protein soybean variety with the largest promotion area in the country since the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan".
He also cultivated the high-oil soybean "Jihuang No. 13", whose oil content exceeds that of imported soybeans, making it an advantageous variety for my country to compete with foreign high-oil soybeans; he participated in the completion of the "Evaluation and Utilization of Collection, Preservation and Utilization of China's Crop Germplasm Resources" The project won the National Science and Technology Progress Award again...
Overcoming the two difficulties of high-yielding varieties and high-protein varieties, Zhang Mengchen made breakthroughs again and again in the field of soybean research. Over the years, he has bred more than 20 soybean varieties, and the related varieties have been promoted over an area of more than 100 million acres; he has won more than 20 scientific and technological achievement awards, and won the National May 1st Labor Medal, "National Outstanding Scientific and Technological Worker" and other titles...
Although He has received many honors, but Zhang Mengchen said that as a "farmer's son", he values the evaluation of farmers the most. Once, an old farmer praised him and said: "Teacher Zhang, your smellless soybeans are like peanuts when eaten raw!" Zhang Mengchen was very happy after hearing this.
Zhang Mengchen checks the growth of soybeans in the field. Picture provided by the interviewee
Using crutches to harvest soybeans
Over the past 40 years, Zhang Mengchen has not only led his team to create records in soybean breeding in my country, but also solved many soybean breeding problems in the world. How did he do it?
Zhang Mengchen replied: "The results depend on how far you are from the farmland." In Hainan, he went to the fields during the day to see the growth of soybean experimental materials, and returned to his residence at night to work overtime to analyze and summarize.
In 2010, Zhang Mengchen was diagnosed with bilateral femoral head necrosis. His legs would hurt if he walked too much. Even though he is physically handicapped, he still insists on going to the fields on crutches. “I can even use a cane to pull the pods to see how they are growing.” He joked to colleagues who were worried about his health.
One year during the southern breeding season, the soybeans bred by Zhang Mengchen were in the harvesting period. One day, wind and rain suddenly occurred in Sanya. At that time, he was the only one left in the breeding base. "A strong wind and heavy rain may destroy the soybeans that have been cultivated so hard!" Zhang Mengchen felt nervous.
In order to grab the harvest, the 64-year-old picked up a sickle and walked to the soybean field on crutches. After going to the fields, he thought the crutches were in the way, so he simply threw them aside and said, "No matter how painful it is, I have to endure it."
"Teacher Zhang, let's help you harvest the soybeans." In the wind and rain, two students who came to Sanya from Fujian to do scientific research were moved by Zhang Mengchen and braved the rain to help him harvest soybeans. The season waits for no one, and more and more soybeans are entering the maturity stage. He and his two students just can't harvest them. People around him see them and go to the fields to help.
At night, Zhang Mengchen was lying on the bed. His waist and legs hurt so much that he couldn't sleep. But when it got light and saw the soybeans waiting to be harvested, he couldn't care about anything else. In the first month of the year in Hainan, the temperature is very high during the day. One day, Zhang Mengchen squatted in the soybean field for a long time, his vision went dark and he fainted. After a while, he slowly woke up and got up on his own.
He is over 60 years old, but he is still running around in the fields. He is so busy that he doesn’t even bother to eat. It is precisely because of his devotion to work that Zhang Mengchen was nicknamed "Stupid Bean". In his view, those engaged in agriculture can only accurately grasp data and information and do their work well only if they are close to the "first site" of the land.
Today, Zhang Mengchen is still struggling on the front line of Nanfan. Every time he comes to Hainan, as soon as he enters the experimental station, he will immediately put on long-sleeved clothes, a straw hat, and a cane. He can’t wait to go around the bean fields and touch the pods in the fields, as if he is meeting an old man he has not seen for a long time. friend.
(Source: Hainan Daily)
