The construction of the Chongming Narcissus Germplasm Center is in full swing. Since its commencement on August 25, 2024, the foundational work for the narcissus project has been completed through the joint efforts of all participating parties, and it has now entered the final stages. Upon completion, the germplasm resources of Chongming narcissus will "settle down" here.

The Chongming Narcissus Germplasm Center is located in the modern facility agriculture zone of the Yangtze River Delta Agricultural Silicon Valley, with Shanghai Chongming Agricultural Park Development Co., Ltd. as the implementing unit. The project covers a total area of 296.98 mu and includes the construction of three glass greenhouses, one tissue culture room, one warehouse, one cold storage facility, and a two-story office building. Currently, workers are installing cultivation racks, inoculation tables, seedling beds, and other facilities and equipment in the glass greenhouses and tissue culture room. It is expected that district-level completion acceptance will be achieved before the end of October this year.

In terms of biological characteristics, Chongming narcissus is an autotriploid. Although its ovary can swell, the seeds are empty and shriveled, unable to form viable seeds, hence asexual reproduction is commonly used to produce bulblets. Given that a single mother bulb of Chongming narcissus only bears three to four small bulblets on both sides, and there are significant differences in the growth and development of each small bulblet, the natural reproduction coefficient is low, making standardized and large-scale production difficult. Additionally, scholars have conducted quantitative detection of five viruses in Chongming narcissus, and the results show that viruses pose a serious threat to its growth.

"Different from traditional planting methods, we adopt advanced domestic techniques for tissue culture propagation and in vitro virus elimination of narcissus. Theoretically, one bulb can produce 128 narcissus seedlings in the tissue culture room within a year. After rooting, these are transferred to greenhouse sheds for acclimatization and cultivation," project leader Yang Weibing explained to the reporter. Considering factors such as contamination rates, one bulb can actually “produce” 70 to 80 narcissus bulbs per year, allowing for a large number of plants to be obtained in a short time.

This technology will break through the limitations of natural reproduction of narcissus, overcome the two major challenges of low traditional reproduction efficiency and virus accumulation, effectively improve the reproduction efficiency of narcissus, achieve industrialized production of bulbs, consistently maintain the excellent characteristics of the varieties, and lay a research foundation for the production of virus-free bulbs. At full production, the tissue culture room's maximum annual output can reach 600,000 bulbs, the number of commercial bulbs in the field after three years can reach 3.2 million, and the number of field bulblets can increase to 9.6 million.

In the future, the Chongming Narcissus Germplasm Center will focus on Chongming narcissus, gather outstanding narcissus varieties from around the world, and create a germplasm center integrating germplasm collection, improved variety breeding, and demonstration promotion, thereby driving the high-quality development of the Chongming narcissus industry.