Domestically bred varieties now cover more than 95% of China's planted crop area, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) reported in December 2025, up from roughly 70% before the 2021 Seed Industry Revitalization Action Plan. The figure shows how quickly Beijing's push for seed self-reliance is converting policy into acreage.

At the 33rd China Beijing Seed Industry Conference on September 4-5, organizers exhibited 145 frontier technological achievements, including breeding chips, large artificial-intelligence models, and smart phenotyping equipment. More than 50 breeding chips covered crops, livestock and poultry, aquatic species, and fruit trees.

What is replacing imported genotyping technology?

For two decades, U.S. suppliers dominated the genotyping chip market that breeders use to scan plant DNA and select parents. Illumina and Affymetrix, now part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, served Chinese seed companies facing high procurement costs and a persistent technology gap through 2024.

In February 2025, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) placed Illumina on the Unreliable Entity List. The following month it banned the company from exporting gene sequencers to China. MOFCOM lifted that ban in November 2025, but Illumina remains on the list.

Domestic alternatives have moved fast. In May 2024, Suzhou Laso Biotech, together with the Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences and China Agricultural University, released a solid-phase wheat genotyping chip developed and produced in-house. In October 2025, Laso and the Jiangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences released a rapeseed chip, mastering a technique Laso's chairman said had been "long monopolized by a few U.S. companies."

Liquid-chip maker MolBreeding, based in Hebei, says its products cover 156 species. Yuan Longping High-Tech Agriculture, Syngenta, and Dabeinong have all deployed them at scale in commercial breeding.

How dominant are domestic GM traits in China?

The 2024 Negative List, issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and MOFCOM, bars foreign investors from "the breeding of GM varieties of crops, breeding livestock and poultry, and aquatic seedlings, or in the production of their GM seeds."

Imported GM grain must carry certificates stating the material "may be used only as processing raw material, may not be diverted to other uses, and may not be released into the environment."

Cotton shows how quickly substitution can play out. In 1998, foreign Bt cotton varieties held more than 95% of the Chinese market. By 2005, varieties from the Cotton Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences had reached 70%. Today, Chinese-bred Bt cotton holds 99% of the domestic market.

Beijing also supports outbound expansion. MARA's May 2025 notices approved Dabeinong's GM soybean traits for cultivation in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.

Where does gene editing fit in the approval pipeline?

MARA's January 2022 trial guidelines and 2023 review rules created a shorter path for gene-edited crops that add no environmental or food-safety risk. Developers can apply for a production-and-application biosafety certificate directly after intermediate trials.

Within two years, MARA issued 10 such certificates — five for soybeans, two for corn, two for wheat, and one for rice — mostly to Shandong Shunfeng Biotechnology and Qi Biodesign. MARA's 14th Five-Year Plan achievements list cited "Cas12-family gene-editing platform tools with independent intellectual property rights."

The tools themselves now travel outward. Germany's KWS took a global license to editing tools from Shunfeng in September 2025; France's Limagrain took one from Qi Biodesign in July 2026.

How is AI reshaping the breeding workflow?

The Beijing conference showcased 12 seed-industry AI models. The Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Yazhouwan National Laboratory, and China Agricultural University jointly released SeedLLM in 2024, then layered GeneScientist on top in 2025 to help researchers flag previously unreported gene functions.

China Agricultural University released Shennong Breeding Studio during the conference, integrating germplasm data and breeding analysis tools that respond to natural-language queries from researchers.

These models draw on data from more than 1,000 regional crop variety trial stations that feed designated national platforms each year. The State Council's 2025 "AI+" Opinions and the 2026 No. 1 Central Document both direct agencies to integrate AI into commercial seed development.

What does this mean for global seed suppliers?

The May 2026 high-oil soybean biosafety certificate, issued to the Oil Crops Research Institute of CAAS and partners, signals that MARA continues to approve new domestic events. Its public approval lists stopped at the end of 2024, a transparency gap USDA flagged in December 2025.

As Beijing's import substitution matures and Chinese firms like Dabeinong and Shunfeng expand abroad, foreign seed and trait suppliers should expect continued pressure in the Chinese market and rising competition in third-country markets through 2026 and beyond.