Vice Permier underscores innovation in agriculture

BEIJING—Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu on Saturday called for more scientific and technological innovation efforts to modernize the country’s agriculture and raise the income of farmers.
Hui made the remarks in Beijing at the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He urged agricultural scientists and research institutions to cultivate more talented people and train more farmers to promote sciences and technologies to boost agricultural productivity.
Greater efforts should be made to carry out international cooperation and exchanges in agricultural science and technology and take an active part in the world’s agricultural sci-tech transformation, Hui said.
Agricultural sci-tech achievements are also crucial to make countryside booming and farmers rich, he added. Whitefly, one of the world’s most invasive agricultural pests that has devastated crops in China and Australia in recent years, owes its “success” to its mating habits, said a leading Chinese entomologist Friday.
Liu Shusheng, an expert at the Insect Sciences Institute under China’s Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, and Paul De Barro, a scientist at CSIRO Entomology, Australia’s national science agency in Brisbane, have jointly published a paper on their research in the latest Science Journal published by AAAS.
The scientists conducted regular field samplings of whiteflies in east China’s Zhejiang Province between 2004 and 2006 and in Queensland, Australia, from 1995 to 2005 to monitor the insect’s behaviour.
The insect arrived in Australia and China in the 1990s through the international flower trade and has since displaced native populations of the same type of whitefly in both countries. In Zhejiang, for example, it took the invaders just three to five years to supplant the native population, according to the research.
“The invasive pest reported in our paper is currently devastating China’s agriculture and environment,” said Liu, lead author of the study. The marauding aphids have blighted tomato and vegetable crops and in some cases spread plant viruses, forcing farmers to spend millions extra for additional insecticide supplies.
“As China’s agriculture is more fragile than that of many developed countries, I expect the damage here will be much more severe and will continue for many years,” said Lui, who recently returned from a three-day field trip. “It was sad to see that many tomato growers in Zhejiang are suffering complete losses of their entire crop this season due to this pest and the viruses it transmits.” But the invasion also intrigued entomologists who wondered how this member of the silver leaf whitefly Bemisia tabaci species — a genetic variant known as Biotype B — could so quickly establish its dominance in a new territory. “We’re trying to find out what made B. tabaci biotype B such a successful invader and the answer appears to be sex,” said Liu.—Xinhua