Shen Kequan, male, aged 74, is a villager in Yangqiao Village, Linli County, Changde City, Hunan Province.
Shen Changjian, male, 46 years old, is a villager in Yangqiao Village, Linli County, Changde City, Hunan Province.
In 1978, beekeeper Shen Kequan discovered three wild rapeseed plants with a long flowering period and good growth structure in the mountains of Guizhou. He brought them back to his hometown for sowing, hoping to provide a new source of honey for apiaries. Then I thought of improving and cultivating rapeseed varieties with high yields to solve the problem of difficulty in eating oil in my hometown.
At the beginning, the villagers laughed at him for "he wants to be a scientist". It was not until the 1980s that Shen Kequan cultivated high-quality rapeseed seeds and was recognized by the villagers.
In the 1990s, local authorities fined and detained Shen Kequan because his rapeseed varieties had not been approved by the state. But he still worked hard to educate himself on the genetics, breeding and production cultivation of rapeseed. In the absence of professional analysis or professional instruments, the father and son observed with the naked eye and summarized the patterns based on records.
In 1996, the family incurred a lot of debt for rape research. Shen Changjian sold his minibus and took the proceeds from the car sale home to invest in rapeseed research and development.
In 2004, the "Guiye A" sterile line bred by Shen Kequan and his son won the national invention patent certificate. In 2007, Shen Kequan brought his own giant rapeseed to the 12th International Rapeseed Conference held in Wuhan, causing quite a sensation.
In 2009, Shen Kequan passed away, but Shen Changjian still persisted in rapeseed breeding. The family buried Shen Kequan on a hillside not far from the experimental site. The family knew that these rapeseeds were the old man's last wish and concern.
Today, Shen Changjian’s “Chen Youza” 202 and 819 have entered the regional testing phase. There are 300 individual plant samples in the five-acre test field for inspection. Each sample is sent for inspection at a cost of 200 yuan; 300 acres In the demonstration film, he still owes more than 20,000 yuan in wages, and he is about to apply fertilizer and another 20,000 yuan in fertilizer money. For the Shen Changjian family, who have had no income from their main business for 35 years, "they rely on farmland for food and borrowing for scientific research." Over the past decades, Shen Kequan and Shen Changjian and his son have raised more than 1.5 million yuan in self-funded funds. In recent years, the government has often provided funding, but The Shen family owed a lot of debt, "almost all relatives borrowed it." The most valuable items in the family were two refrigerators used to store rape seeds.
For 35 years, father and son succeeded each other, just for the dream of a rapeseed plant. Shen Changjian said that once the current seeds are approved, they will be sold to seed companies, and the funds will be used to continuously develop new hybrid combinations of the next generation of rapeseed. You may have to take your time on your rapeseed breeding journey, but you will continue to do so no matter what.