China food security: agriculture sector drops hopes of 2023 start for GM corn crops

Seed breeding companies in China say it will be at least 2024 before genetically modified (GM) corn can be planted commercially

Despite steps to overhaul GM rules, the government is still taking a ‘cautious’ approach amid public fears about safety, insiders say

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China, one of the world’s biggest agricultural importers and exporters, has been much slower to deploy GM corn commercially than in other countries. Photo: Xinhua

Kinling Loin Sanya, Hainan

Published: 2:30pm, 4 Apr 2023

Leading Chinese seed companies have delayed hopes that commercial production of genetically modified (GM) corn will start this year, as Beijing has not provided a clear timeline despite a significant push for food security and calls to “revitalise the seed industry”.

Seed experts told their peers at the annual China Seed Congress in the country’s southernmost province Hainan that they would have to wait until at least 2024 before they could expect a green light for mass plantation of GM corn.

They still, however, called for investment and expressed confidence that corn produced with GM technology would take 90 per cent of the market in five years’ time.

“The government is taking a cautious approach and wants to take one step at a time,” said Ma Dehua, president at one of China’s leading seed companies, Yuan Longping High-Tech Agri, adding that more pilot programmes would be conducted in the northeast and southwest of the country this year.

“For us, of course we would like to see a faster relaxation [of the policy].”

Lu Yuping, the general manager of the company’s Hainan-based lab Longping Biotechnology, said he was expecting his company’s safety certificate to arrive by late 2022, but it was only approved in January.

“The technology is ready,” he said, but there were no plans for a mass roll out of GM this year.