A group of researchers from Ningbo, Zhejiang province are busy selecting seeds in Lingshui Li autonomous county in Hainan province, with the hope of reaping a bountiful harvest this autumn.

Every winter and spring, agricultural researchers from all over the country travel to Hainan to breed seeds, taking advantage of the local climate.

Huang Xuan is an agronomist at the Ningbo Academy of Agricultural Sciences. For the past decade, he has been flying to Hainan every December to sow rice seeds and take care of them until May or June of the next year, when the rice seeds are harvested and shipped back to Ningbo. Only then does this cycle of the "southern breeding season" end.

Zhang Leichen, a watermelon breeding researcher from Ningbo, has already begun field trials in Ningbo.

In a plastic greenhouse in Xiapu town, green watermelon seedlings are growing vigorously. They are marked with plastic cards of different numbers and must undergo various screenings to be identified as new varieties. These watermelon seedlings are transported back from the Hainan base.

"Through the 'southern breeding' in Hainan, the speed of watermelon variety breeding is effectively accelerated, and the time needed to update new varieties is shortened. For example, it used to take about eight years to breed a new watermelon variety in Ningbo. Now it takes just four to five years," Zhang said.

"Twenty-one researchers and eight management personnel from Ningbo participated in this round of 'southern breeding'. They mainly carried out experiments on new varieties of hybrid rice, conventional rice, watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkin, and gourd. They've planted more than 24,000 breeding materials, obtained a record high of more than 12,000 new combinations, and harvested about four tons of rice and melon seeds," said Meng Qiufeng, head of the Research and Promotion Department of the academy.