A Nanfan Story: When an American Student Meets a Chinese Soybean Breeding Expert

In Sanya, tourists often flock to the beaches—but American student Walker Scott walked into a soybean field instead. Hailing from the U.S. state of Georgia, this international student traveled thousands of miles to China specifically to visit the Yazhou Nanfan Soybean Breeding Base in Sanya, Hainan Province, to learn how Chinese soybeans are cultivated.

At the base, he met Li Yanhua, a soybean breeding expert from the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Li is known as the "Soybean Queen."

Thanks to its abundant sunshine and favorable heat conditions, Sanya has become China's "Seed Industry Silicon Valley." About 70% of China's new crop varieties are bred here. Walker asked how long it takes for a soybean to reach maturity. Li told him it takes about 80 days from sowing to harvest—and the Hainan base increases the breeding speed severalfold.

"Nanfan accelerates generations. Crossbreed in Northeast China, then grow two seasons in tropical Hainan—eight years of work can be done in three." The expert explained the significance of Nanfan breeding to Walker.

But soybean breeding is no easy task. A soybean flower is only two millimeters across—small flowers, little pollen, and a low pollination success rate. Soybeans are strictly self-pollinating, so crossbreeding requires removing the stamen and pollinating the flower the moment it begins to open—even the slightest misstep means failure. Li told Walker that her team grows more than 5,000 soybean materials at the Sanya base every year, selecting and breeding year after year for decades, with just one goal: to cultivate better soybeans.

In the field, Walker and Li had a lively and fun soybean harvesting competition. Through the work, Walker gained a firsthand sense of the hard work involved in Chinese soybean breeding.

China's soybean planting area has now exceeded 6.67 million hectares. High-yield, high-quality varieties are the foundation of industrial development. To accelerate the cultivation of better varieties, Li Yanhua and her team race against time every day. In March, when Hainan's first harvest season begins, the soybeans are threshed and sent to Northeast China for continued planting. They shuttle between south and north for planting to speed up breeding.

Walker said he had never been involved in agriculture before and never thought about where the food on his table came from. But here, he witnessed the efforts behind a single meal. At the breeding base, Walker—a philosophy student—came to deeply appreciate that behind good food lie sweat and dedication.

In China, soybeans have never been just a crop in the field. They grow in silence, yet their roots reach deep into the lifeblood of a nation's food security. Breeding experts like Li Yanhua are the ones who guard this lifeline.