In April 2011, the most important thing for domestic seed industry is that China finally released the formal "Suggestions for Accelerating Development of Modern Crop Seed Industry" to enhance the development of domestic seed industry. The release of this policy means that domestic seed industry has entered a new development stage. Some insiders even think the policy is the most important policy for domestic seed industry in history.
The most notable measure of this policy is that it claims seed companies should be the main force for the variety breeding in the future, which is quite different from the present situation. At present, most of the varieties are bred by research institutes and the R&D capability of seed companies is very weak.
However, it is very hard for seed companies to be strong in R&D to breed some varieties in a short time. At present, they still have to buy varieties from research institutes. Facing the variety drought, some seed companies are even trying to invest over one million dollar to buy a corn variety that has not been approved yet.
Besides the policy, GM is also a very hot topic recently. Xianyu 335, one of the leading corn varieties in China, was reported to be related with GM variety by domestic media. The report caused strong repercussions, showing that some people in China are strongly against the promotion of GM crops.