A national crop molecular breeding center was set up in Qingdao, a coastal city of Shandong province.

Opened on Oct 17, the center will integrate a vegetable molecular breeding system with traditional breeding technologies to produce superior products with proprietary intellectual property rights.

Founded by the Qingdao Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the center will build a molecular marker-assisted selection breeding laboratory and pilot fields to research nutritional quality improvement and disease and stress resistances for vegetables.