The presidium of the third session of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC), China's national legislature, held its second meeting Saturday.
Zhao Leji, executive chairman of the presidium, presided over the meeting.
The meeting decided to submit multiple documents to lawmakers for deliberation.
The documents include draft resolutions on the government work report, on the national economic and social development plan report and the plan for 2025, and on the central and local budgets report and the budgets for 2025.
The documents also include a draft decision on amending the Law on Deputies to the National People's Congress and to the Local People's Congresses at Various Levels.
The presidium's executive chairpersons met before the meeting to prepare the documents.
The executive chairpersons meeting was presided over by Zhao, who is also chairman of the NPC Standing Committee.
Presidium of NPC annual session holds 2nd meeting
Presidium of NPC annual session holds 2nd meeting
A veteran agricultural scientist and deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC), China's national legislature, shared his decades-long mission to reduce the country's reliance on food imports and safeguard its food security by developing high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties.
Gao Derong, a researcher from the Lixiahe Regional Institute of Agricultural Sciences in east China's Jiangsu Province, detailed his relentless pursuit of better wheat varieties while taking a question at a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing "two sessions", a major event in China's political calendar.
He has dedicated more than 30 years to wheat breeding and succeeded in the fight against Fusarium head blight, a serious fungal disease of cereals, including wheat and other small-grain crops, by implanting "disease-resistant genes" inside seeds.
"After 30 years of countless and repeated trials, we finally developed our first Fusarium head blight resistant variety in 2021. It exhibits strong disease resistance and high yield, with a yield of up to 600 kg per mu (0.066 hectare) in a demonstration plot. This means farmers can use fewer pesticides, produce more wheats, and secure a more stable harvest," said Gao.
Addressing the tight rotation schedule in the rice-wheat rotation system in south China, his team developed time-smart varieties like "Yangmai 25," which can be sown as late as December and still achieve a yield of 6,00 kg per mu.
"We have also cultivated a high-quality weak-gluten wheat variety tailored for biscuits and pastries, reversing China's long-standing reliance on imports. These grain varieties, like elite guard teams, help us hold our rice bowl firmly and contribute to securing our food security," Gao said.
As an NPC deputy, Gao extends his research from the lab to the field, gathering farmers' concerns alongside experimental data.
"My duty as a deputy is also written in the fields. 'Can we construct high-standard farmland at an accelerated pace?' 'Can we have more targeted agricultural subsidies?' These are the voices I often heard in the fields, which I carefully recorded like experimental data and transformed into suggestions," he said. Gao said he will continue working to enable the land to yield more grain, help farmers increase their incomes, and contribute to ensuring national food security.
This year's "two sessions," the annual meetings of China's top political advisory body and national legislature, opened in Beijing Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. As the world's second-largest economy embarks on the inaugural year of its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) period, these gatherings will serve both as a review of past achievements, and as a strategic compass guiding the nation's future development.
NPC deputy vows to fortify China's food security through seed innovation
