Qingyuan Group boasts a globally leading crop science R&D team and has filed over 1,700 patents worldwide, building what is described as the foundational operating system for agriculture.
Recently, Qingdao Qingyuan Crop Science Group Co., Ltd. (Qingyuan Group) received biosafety certificates from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs for two new self-developed crop traits on the same day. This brings the company's total number of such certificates to five.
The certificates themselves are merely a footnote to Qingyuan Group's emphasis on independent R&D. What is truly noteworthy is that this 17-year-old company has quietly ascended to the main stage of global agricultural technology competition. It possesses a crop science R&D team that leads in global scale, with over 1,000 R&D personnel among its approximately 2,000 employees. The group has filed over 1,700 patents worldwide, with seven proprietary pesticides registered and launched in China. In the herbicide segment, it has contributed 38% of the pesticide compounds that have received ISO nomenclature globally, ranking first worldwide. In the field of biological breeding, its self-developed technologies, such as multi-gene stacking and RNAi antiviral technology, have successively broken foreign monopolies, establishing it as a significant force in China's seed technology breakthrough.
Starting from a laboratory in Qingdao and now operating 19 overseas branches in South America and Southeast Asia, Qingyuan has demonstrated over 17 years that in agriculture, one of the oldest industries, the most robust competitiveness always stems from cutting-edge scientific exploration.
Breaking a Four-Decade Global Market Lull: China's Innovation in Green Pesticides
Looking back to 2018, Qingyuan's self-developed herbicides cyclopyrimorate and pyraquinate were launched, marking the first time China's three major staple crops had access to domestically patented herbicides, facilitating the transformation of large areas of low-yield farmland. Prior to this, the herbicide markets for wheat and rice fields were largely monopolized by foreign companies, with domestic firms mostly acting as imitators or agents.
The emergence of cyclopyrimorate changed this landscape. It was the first HPPD inhibitor (4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase inhibitor) used in wheat fields to control grassy weeds and some broadleaf weeds. This compound, with its unique mechanism of action—inhibiting HPPD enzyme activity to cause weed leaf bleaching and death—provided a novel solution for resistant weeds in global wheat fields. Industry insiders hailed it as a "milestone event in the history of wheat field herbicide development."
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Qingyuan introduced another blockbuster product: the non-selective herbicide "flucarbazone." It was evaluated by the industry as "the first new compound in the non-selective herbicide field in 40 years, achieving a breakthrough from zero to one in the commercialization of China's self-developed non-selective herbicides."
This is significant because the non-selective herbicide market has long been dominated by glyphosate and glufosinate. However, with increasing weed resistance and greater attention to pesticide toxicity, these dominant herbicides face developmental challenges, creating an urgent market need for a new solution.
Flucarbazone is a PPO inhibitor (protoporphyrinogen oxidase inhibitor) non-selective herbicide with a broad weed spectrum, fast efficacy, and good low-temperature tolerance. It effectively controls tough weeds like goosegrass that have developed resistance to glyphosate and glufosinate.
Yet, Qingyuan's ambition extends beyond "selling a bottle of herbicide." It concurrently developed resistance genes tolerant to flucarbazone, establishing China's first and the world's third "non-selective herbicide + resistance gene" synergistic system. Simply put, when farmers use Qingyuan's flucarbazone, they can plant crops carrying the tolerance gene, achieving precise control where "spraying eliminates weeds while crops remain unharmed." This "seed-pesticide synergy" model thoroughly bridges the boundaries between pesticide and seed companies.
From a broader perspective, Qingyuan's true leadership lies not in how many new compounds it has created, but in building a complete technological closed loop from "compound" to "gene" to "germplasm." In the past, Chinese pesticide companies could only sell active ingredients and formulations, with core technology held by others. Qingyuan's model is: it invents new compounds, discovers matching resistance genes, and can also transfer these genes into crops—maintaining full autonomy and control from molecular design in the lab to final field performance.
In the field of pesticide innovation, Qingyuan's contributions have received quantified recognition from international peers. Since 2018, according to ISO nomenclature statistics, Qingyuan has contributed 18% of new pesticide varieties globally, with about 38% in the herbicide segment, ranking first worldwide in both metrics. By 2030, Qingyuan expects to have launched over 20 new proprietary compounds.
Behind this series of achievements is the pesticide R&D innovation system Qingyuan has built. From compound design and synthesis, bioassay resistance research, to process research and formulation, and even a product safety evaluation laboratory certified by the OECD for GLP (Good Laboratory Practice), Qingyuan has developed comprehensive R&D capabilities for herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and plant growth regulators. In 2025, Qingyuan was approved as the creation base for the National Key Laboratory of Green Pesticides (Qingdao) and other major scientific research platforms such as the Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, it led four major national science and technology projects, receiving one National Science and Technology Progress Award (Second Class) and three China Pesticide Innovation Contribution Awards (First Class).
From Gene Discovery to "Gene Scissors": Independent Breakthrough in Biological Breeding
If pesticide innovation is Qingyuan's "left hand," then biological breeding is its "right hand." Together, they form a "fist" leading industry development.
As early as 2013, Qingyuan established a biotechnology and breeding team, quietly laying out in the field of biological breeding, which was almost a blank in China at the time. Back then, multinational corporations had built a full set of patent barriers from gene discovery to genetic transformation, leaving most domestic Chinese companies far behind. Qingyuan started from scratch, gradually building China's largest crop genetic transformation platform, capable of simultaneously conducting transformation work on over 30 crop species and carrying 6–8 genes on a single vector—achieving international advanced levels in vector aggregation capability.
More crucially, there was a breakthrough in the independent development of gene editing tools. For a long time, core patents for CRISPR gene editing were controlled by a few institutions in Europe and America, with Chinese companies facing high licensing fees and potential intellectual property risks when using related technologies. To break through technologically, Qingyuan independently developed core tools like the "Kingcas12 gene editing system" and "KSE gene knock-up," bypassing foreign patent blockades.
Using these tools, Qingyuan created a batch of new germplasms, such as high-oil soybeans with an oil content of 27% and high-protein corn with a protein content of 18%. The average soybean oil content in China is about 20%; a 7-percentage-point increase represents a significant cost advantage for crushing enterprises. High-protein corn can be directly used as feed raw material, reducing dependence on imported soybean protein.
Qingyuan Group's subsidiary, Qingdao Wangdu Animal Science and Technology Co., Ltd., has also extended gene editing technology to the animal breeding field. Gene-edited rainbow trout and pigs show growth rates significantly increased by over 30%, gene-edited disease-resistant pigs are completely immune to PRRS (Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome), and gene-edited cows have lactoferrin content increased dozens of times... These technological reserves lay the groundwork for the company's future expansion into broader life science fields.
Globally, multi-gene stacking is the commanding height of international seed industry competition. Bayer's "Intacta 5+ soybean" launched in Brazil carries five traits for herbicide tolerance and insect resistance simultaneously, having cumulatively increased local production by over 20 million tons. On this track, Qingyuan's "gene stacking" route has also achieved breakthrough progress.
Among the two new traits that recently received biosafety certificates, the soybean trait uses multi-gene stacking technology, introducing four functional genes at once—tolerance to flucarbazone, tolerance to glufosinate, and two genes for resistance to lepidopteran pests—making it one of the soybean new traits in China with the highest number of genes on a single vector.
The other certificate targets solving the problem of maize rough dwarf virus (MRDV), demonstrating greater originality. MRDV can cause maize yield reductions of 20%–30% or even total crop failure. However, due to a lack of excellent disease-resistant germplasm resources, traditional breeding methods struggle to break the resistance bottleneck. Qingyuan's solution is: based on the RNA interference mechanism, design sequences specifically targeting virus replication-related genes, transfer them into maize, enabling the crop to produce an "immune response" itself, blocking virus replication at the molecular level. Field trials show that maize carrying this new trait achieves a "highly resistant" level against MRDV, with a significantly lower disease index compared to control varieties. This is the world's first approved transformation event for maize antiviral disease created using RNAi technology, opening a new path for fundamentally controlling this "maize cancer."
In Qingyuan's plan, pesticide innovation and biological breeding are not two parallel lines but a "dual-wheel drive" that empowers each other. Possessing proprietary herbicides along with matching tolerance genes means Qingyuan can provide farmers with integrated "seed + pesticide" solutions. The development of gene editing tools provides the "scalpel" for precise improvement of crop traits.
Executing this "combination punch," Qingyuan has charted a more ambitious blueprint: during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, its average annual R&D expenditure ratio should reach 20%–30%; by 2030, the R&D team size should expand to 2,500 people; it expects to have launched over 20 new proprietary compounds cumulatively; obtain 20 biosafety certificates for key crops like soybeans and corn; and cultivate over 100 new high-yield, high-quality varieties...
Qingyuan's development path is a microcosm of China's agricultural technology advancing from "catching up" to "leading the way." The motto written on its wall, "Explore life sciences, eliminate global hunger," is gradually transforming from a vision into reality.
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