At the beginning of 2020, the Farmers’ Daily started the 26th promotion of “China’s Rural News Figures”, aiming at finding outstanding role models with expertise in agriculture and devotion to rural areas and farmers, strengthening the weakness of “Three Rurals” in building an overall well-off society and combating poverty, and encouraging the whole society to care about, back up and devote themselves to the three rural issues. After the rigorous preliminary selection and panel’s review, there were overall 10 people who were named 2019 China’s Rural News Figures. Among them, professor Song Weining’s team from the College of Agronomy of NWAFU were chosen because of the breakthrough they made in decipheringthe wheat genome.

　　Professor Song Weining’s team have been carrying out research on physical map construction of the wheat genome and wheat genome sequencing, the origin, domestication and evolution of wheat, the basis of molecular biology of plant resistance, and the discovery of favorable germplasm resources and genes of wild wheat. The scientific research projects they conducted and participated in have reached more than 20.

　　After the 13 years’ research conducted by over 70 research units from more than 20 countries around the world, the genome-wide reference sequence mapping with common hexaploid wheat "Chinese Spring" as the specimen was finally published in the international top academic journal Science. As the only Chinese team that participated in and undertookthe actual research, Song Weining's team from NWAFU completed the entire research work on 7DL chromosome, contributing Chinese wisdom and strength to the great work. As a milestone event in the worldhistory of wheat research, this achievement has been widely concerned by the scientific community and life science circles and was rated by the academicians of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering as one of the “World’s Top Ten Tech News in 2018”. It is believed by the academic world that theachievement will make a positive and far-reaching influence on the world’s future research on the basic biology and breeding of wheat.

　　Translated by Tian Yiyun

Proofread by Yan Xianhui