Dec.29,2021
Recently, Ma Zhiying, a professor of HEBAU, won the 7th “China Agricultural Talent Award” in recognition of his outstanding contributions to cotton genetic improvement and grain& cotton production development. It is reported that a total of 11 agricultural science and technology experts across the country won the award.
“China Agricultural Talent Award” is a triennially award established and organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Areas for national agricultural science and technology workers who have made significant contributions in promoting agricultural scientific and technological progress, the implementation of Rural Revitalization Strategy and accelerating agricultural and rural modernization.
Prof. Ma Zhiying has long been committed to agricultural science and technology innovation research and production services, and he led the team to overcome the problem of simultaneous improvement of disease resistance and high yield, and bred a series of new cotton varieties strong in disease resistance and high in yield. His research provides core technology for solving the major production problems of Cotton Verticillium Wilt and breaks through the technical bottleneck of synergistic improvement of high quality, high yield and multi resistance. A series of new cotton varieties with "high quality and high yield" have been bred, which provide strong support for improving the quality and efficiency of cotton production. Targeting at the problem of the mismatching between insufficiency in light, heat & water resources and agricultural machinery & agronomy, he developed a systematic water-saving, high-yield and high-efficiency technology for wheat and corn in different ecological areas of Haihe Plain, which provided a practical technology for solving the problem of “water-consuming & low-yield” in grain production. His research decoded the genomic structure variation and genetic effect of cotton breeding and improvement, and found important genetic loci and new genes controlling different traits, which provided a new theoretical basis and gene resources for crop multi-trait collaborative improvement. The results were published in Nature Genetics in 2021. Ma Zhiying has presided over and completed more than 20 national, provincial and ministerial scientific research projects and achieved a number of innovative achievements, bred 22 approved cotton varieties, obtained 24 national invention patents and published 178 papers in famous journals domestically and abroad. The production of new varieties and technologies have been applied in more than 10,67 million acres of fields, and have achieved remarkable social and economic benefits. As the first completer, he has won 3 second prizes of “National Science and Technology Progress Award” and 5 first prize of science and technology at provincial or ministerial level. In addition, he won “2020 Hebei Provincial Science and Technology Outstanding Contribution Award”, the science and technology innovation award of “He Liang He Li Foundation”, and “the Excellent Innovation Team Award of Chinese Agricultural Science and Technology”.
