At the 13th Da Bei Nong (DBN) Agricultural Science and Technology Awards Ceremony and the Zhongguan Village Global Agricultural Technology Innovation Forum, Huazhong Agricultural University's (HZAU) project "Precision breeding technology development and cultivation of high-quality new tomato varieties" won the First Prize, while the project "Genome editing of a rice CDP-DAG synthase confers multipathogen resistance" received the Youth Science and Technology Innovation Award.

The HZAU team has excelled in creating superior tomato germplasm resources and establishing a precise breeding technology system for tomatoes. Through the use of modern biotechnological methods, researchers have cultivated a series of high-yield, disease-resistant, and high-quality tomato varieties known for their excellent taste and adaptability. These varieties have been widely adopted, grown on 901,333 hectares of land and contributing an output value of 18.23 billion yuan ($2.5 billion).

In rice production, various diseases pose significant threats to both yield and quality. The research team at HZAU identified that the rice lesion mimic mutant rbl1 exhibits remarkable multipathogen resistance against blast and bacterial blight diseases, albeit with low yield. Through innovative gene-editing techniques, they managed to knock out a transmembrane segment of the rbl1 gene, resulting in the creation of an rbl1Δ12 mutant rice strain. This strain not only shows multipathogen disease resistance but also maintains stable yield levels. Under severe blast disease conditions in the field, this strain has demonstrated the ability to reduce yield losses by approximately 40 percent, demonstrating promising prospects for breeding applications and widespread adoption. This groundbreaking research was published in Nature in June 2023.