The Jiangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences, together with Huazhong Agricultural University and Suzhou Lasso Biochip Technology Co., Ltd., officially released my country's first Brassica napus 20K solid-phase gene chip - "Sinochem Oil No. 1". The birth of "SMIC Oil No. 1" broke the foreign monopoly on solid-phase chip technology for nearly 20 years.It marks that China's rape seed industry has moved from traditional breeding of "looking at the sky to eat" to the era of smart breeding of "precision navigation".

The point-making process of solid-phase chips has long been monopolized by a few American companies, and the technology is sealed and airtight. In six years of research, the Chinese team has written more than 1,600 experimental records, more than 2,700 experimental reports, and collected more than 10 million scanned images. However, the failure rate is as high as 99.9%, and as many as 80 billion microspheres are scrapped.

The turning point will come in 2024. Thanks to the industry-university-research cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing University and other units, a group of post-90s and post-95s scientific researchers dared to think and work hard, and finally turned the dot-making process from drawings into reality, laying a solid "skeleton" for "SMC Oil No. 1".

After solving the problem of "how to make" the chip, we also have to solve the problem of "what to install" which is the key to improving breeding efficiency. In 2025, Professor Yi Bin's team at the National Rapeseed Improvement Center of Huazhong Agricultural University took the lead in providing a large amount of key gene locus information.

Immediately afterwards, Hua Wei, chief scientist of the Oil Crops Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, led a team to provide support, which rapidly increased the number of gene locus information from a few thousand to 20,000, covering almost all needs for universal research, which is equivalent to building a "big dictionary" of key gene information of rapeseed.

"Zhongxinyou No. 1" carries more than 17,000 genome-wide background markers and more than 1,500 functional sites.In the past, it may take 10 years to select a variety, but now it can be shortened to as fast as three years; a single test only costs 25 yuan, and the results can be obtained within 72 hours.

"Shongxin Oil No. 1" is just the beginning. Version 2.0 is already in preparation and will contain 60,000 gene sites. At present, a product matrix covering major livestock and poultry such as pigs, chickens, cattle, and sheep, as well as key crops such as wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and rape has also been formed. "China Core" is lighting the way forward for more breeders.