Construction and Exploration of Ideological and Political Education in Crop Breeding Course

Hui LI, Fanjun ZENG, Yinghong TANG

College of Life and Environmental Sciences, Hunan University of Arts and Science, Changde 415000, China

Abstract In order to start a new situation for the development of higher education in China, and to achieve the goal of educating people through the whole process and all-round education in colleges and universities, this paper takes Crop Breeding Course as an example, from the characteristics of the curriculum, the history of crop breeding and the ideological and political elements of professional courses, explored the curriculum construction in the aspects of excavation, and summarized the effects of the ideological and political construction of Crop Breeding Course.

Key words Crop Breeding Course, Ideological and political education in courses, Agronomy

1 Introduction

In December 2016, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized at the Conference of Ideological and Political Work of National Higher Education that we must adhere to the central link of morality and cultivating people, and implement ideological and political work throughout the entire process of education and teaching, so as to achieve full education and all-round education, and start a new situation for the development of China’s higher education. Ideological and political work is related to the fundamental question of what kind of people are to be cultivated in universities, how to cultivate them, and who cultivate them. The ideological and political education of courses is a comprehensive educational concept that combines various courses and ideological and political theory courses in the same direction, forming a synergistic effect, and building a whole-course education pattern.

China is a large agricultural country. Agriculture is the foundation of the national economy, the source of food and clothing for 1.4 billion people, and the foundation of economic development and social stability. At present, China’s agriculture is in a critical period of transition from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture, and a large number of college graduates with professional knowledge of agronomy are needed. However, due to the relatively poor working conditions in agricultural production, the location in the countryside, the distance from the city, and the low wages, many agronomy graduates from colleges and universities are reluctant to engage in agricultural production. In recent years, the employment rate of agricultural-related college students has shown a downward trend, and agricultural talents have been drained continuously. Therefore, how to carry out the ideological and political education of agronomy courses, cultivate students’ love of agriculture, and let agronomy students understand agriculture, love agriculture, and be willing to engage in agricultural production is the primary goal of the current agronomy ideological and political course construction.

Crop Breeding is a backbone course for agronomy majors, and it is a science that studies theories and methods of selection and breeding good varieties of crops. Crop breeding has an important position in agricultural production. Since ancient times, farmers in China have had the concept of choosing good seeds. In the

Classic

of

Poetry

·

Daya

·

Shengmin

, there is a verse of "birth and descending of good seeds", which shows that people had the concept of "good seeds" at that time. Good crop varieties are an important guarantee for achieving sustainable agricultural development. Yuan Longping’s three-line hybrid rice and Li Zhensheng’s wheat variety "Yanmai" series and other fine crop varieties have made important contributions to improving the level of crop production in my country and realizing my country’s food self-sufficiency. Therefore, it is of great significance to construct the ideological and political education for Crop Breeding Course and dig deep into its ideological and political elements to cultivate agronomy students’ patriotism and love for agriculture, so that they can devote themselves to the cause of agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

2 Features of Crop Breeding Course

Crop Breeding is a core compulsory course for agronomy majors in agricultural colleges and universities in China. It is a comprehensive applied science based on genetics and evolution. It involves knowledge and research methods in the fields of botany, plant ecology, plant physiology, biochemistry, plant pathology, agricultural entomology, biostatistics and experimental design, and biotechnology. The content of Crop Breeding is rich in ideological and political elements, which can be integrated into the goal of setting morals and cultivating people during the course, which promotes knowledge transfer and curriculum ideological and political parallelism, and realizes the "three in one" of knowledge transfer, ability training and value guidance, to cultivate high-quality compound application-oriented agricultural talents who know agriculture, love agriculture, and are willing to serve agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

3 Development history of crop breeding in China

Since ancient times, Chinese farmers have had a tradition of choosing good varieties. In the

Classic

of

Poetry

Daya

·

Shengmin

of the Western Zhou Dynasty and the

Book

of

Sishengzhi

of the Western Han Dynasty, there are records of the experience of selecting and retaining seeds for wheat, rice and other crops. There are 86 millet varieties with different characteristics such as wind resistance and insect resistance in

Essential

Techniques

for

the

Welfare

of

the

People

. However, due to the lack of natural science knowledge, the selection and breeding of crop varieties in my country has been stagnated for a long time in the selection of varieties based on their subjective feelings and subjective experience. After the publication of Darwin’s

Origin

of

Species

and Mendel’s

Experiment

in

Plant

Hybridization

, Western countries gradually got rid of the initial stage of breed selection based on subjective experience and developed into an applied science with systematic theory and scientific methods.

After the failure of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, many people of insight started to advocate the introduction of learning Western countries to change the backward situation of China’s agriculture. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, with the introduction of western breeding technology, China’s crop breeding began to move from traditional to modern.

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, a large number of patriots returned from overseas studies to contribute their entire lives to China’s agricultural development and food security. For example, wheat breeding experts such as Jin Shanbao and Zhuang Qiaosheng returned from foreign countries and devoted themselves to scientific research on wheat, and cultivated many excellent varieties of wheat. This played an important role in increasing wheat production in China and promoting the scientific development of wheat breeding. After several generations of breeders’ unremitting efforts, China’s crop breeding has experienced a process from small to large, from weak to strong. The selection and breeding of crops has made considerable progress, which effectively ensures China’s food security. However, affected by factors such as breeding and cultivation, the yield of crops in China still lags behind the world’s advanced level, and a few vegetable varieties still cannot meet the diverse needs of the market.

The Central Economic Work Conference 2020 put forward the need to solve the problems of seeds and farmland. Although China’s seed industry has made great progress, there is still a certain gap in its innovation level compared with developed countries, especially the lack of core technology innovation, and it is urgent to increase the core technology innovation of breeding.

4 Exploration of ideological and political elements in the Crop Breeding Course

Crop Breeding Course is a comprehensive and applied subject with rich course content, and its many knowledge points contain rich ideological and political elements. In the process of teaching, the content of professional knowledge can be combined with the content of ideological and political education, and the "ideological and political nutrition" of the course content itself can be continuously explored. The professional knowledge points and the ideological and political elements can be organically integrated through reasonable curriculum teaching design, so as to enable students to understand the history and current situation of crop breeding in China at the same time of learning professional knowledge, cultivating their sense of historical mission, and forming a correct outlook on life, world outlook and values.

4.1 Caring about three rural issues and cultivating patriotic sense

Utilization

of

Heterosis

and

Male

Sterility

and

Breeding

of

Hybrid

Varieties

mainly describe the basic theories and techniques of using crop heterosis for variety selection, which involve many knowledge points and are difficult to understand. When learning the selection and breeding of hybrid parents, the principles of selection and mating of hybrid parents, male sterility, the heredity of male sterility, and three-line hybrid seed production technology, the introduction of the development history of hybrid rice has enabled the students to have more perceptual knowledge and a deeper understanding of the biological phenomenon of "heterosis". At the same time, the introduction of Yuan Longping and the interesting stories of hybrid rice, through the discovery of sterile rice plants, the discovery of photosensitive sterile plants, the dream of keeping cool under the rice paddies, and the breeding of three-line hybrid rice, two-line hybrid rice, and super rice have made students have a more vivid and profound understanding of the knowledge points, and also stimulated the students’ awareness and patriotism in serving the farmers, agriculture and rural areas.

4.2 Cultivating devotion spirit and sense of big country craftsman

Distant

Hybrid

Breeding

mainly describes the theories and methods of breeding by using the crosses between different species, genera or plant types with more distant relationships in plant taxonomy. The most successful case of using distant cross-breeding methods for variety selection is the series of wheat varieties resistant to

Puccinia

striiformis

(wheat stripe rust). In the 1950s, the stripe rust epidemic in Huanghuai Valley and northern winter wheat regions of Chinia caused a serious reduction in wheat production and seriously affected China’s food security. From 1956, Li Zhensheng took 20 years to overcome the three major difficulties of distant hybridization incompatibility, hybrid infertility, and crazy separation of hybrid offspring. He successfully introduced the genome, chromosome, and chromosome fragments of

Elymus

repens

into wheat and bred new high-yield, disease-resistant and high-quality Xiaoyan wheat series. Through the introduction of successful cases of Xiaoyan wheat breeding, students can better understand the connotation of distant hybridization and the meaning of related knowledge points. By telling the story of Li Zhensheng’s life and deeds, it is able to guide students to face the difficulties when the country encounters difficulties, promote them to be willing to dedicate themselves, and at the same time cultivate their craftsman spirit.

4.3 Being brave to innovate and bold to challenge

Transgenic

Technology

and

Crop

Breeding

mainly describes the main principles and technical methods of genetically modified crop breeding. The genetically modified crop breeding provides a new breeding method, greatly broadens the genetic resources, realizes the targeted transformation of breeding targets, improves the selection efficiency, and speeds up the breeding process. The most successful case of China’s transgenic breeding is the selection of transgenic insect-resistant cotton varieties. In the 1990s, the

Helicoverpa

armigera

disasters continued to occur or broke out in most cotton areas of China, and brought a huge threat to cotton production, and reduced cotton production or even no harvest. China’s cotton farmers are frightened when talking about

H

.

armigera

, which caused a direct economic loss of more than 6 billion yuan in 1992 alone, and an indirect loss of more than 10 billion yuan, which had a great impact on the development of the entire national economy. In addition, due to the outbreak of

H

.

armigera

, the prevention and control of insects increase the production cost of cotton and reduce the comparative benefit of cotton planting. At that time, Monsanto in the United States used genetically modified technology to breed insect-resistant cotton and has received good insect-resistant effects. The United States imposed a technical blockade, resulting in large areas of China’s insect-resistant cotton planted with seeds importing from the United States, which greatly harms China’s cotton production.

In the 1990s, researcher Guo Sandui, a researcher from the Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, led the team to start research on genetically modified insect-resistant cotton. In 1994, their team successfully cultivated genetically modified insect-resistant cotton plants in China, making China become the second country in the world with independent intellectual property rights of genetically modified insect-resistant cotton. Through the story telling in classroom, Guo Sandui’s deeds of cultivating genetically modified insect-resistant cotton were expected to stimulate students’ patriotic enthusiasm, use their scientific and cultural knowledge to serve the motherland, and cultivate students’ spirit of innovation and challenge.

5 Achievements of ideological and political education in the Crop Breeding Course

5.1 Improving the level of moral education of teachers

The construction of ideological and political course is a long-term and systematic educational project. The construction of ideological and political courses puts forward higher requirements on the teaching level and quality of teachers. Course teachers should continuously explore the ideological and political elements of professional courses, and at the same time constantly improve their political and ideological level, organically integrate the knowledge points of professional courses with ideological and political education, so as to cultivate students’ correct outlook on life, world outlook and values. In the teaching process, course teachers should keep pace with the times, and continuously improve their teaching and moral education levels through training, learning, and online learning.

5.2 Stimulating the vitality of the classroom and improving the students’ learning enthusiasm

The theoretical knowledge of Crop Breeding Course is highly academic, boring and difficult to understand. Through the effective way of ideological and political construction, it is able to introduce the breeding process of breeders. Students can learn how breeders use breeding knowledge to select breeds. In this way, the breeding knowledge is organically combined with the specific historical environment and specific characters, so that the theoretical knowledge points can be vivid, and full, which is convenient for students to understand, thereby stimulating the vitality of the classroom. At the same time, the breeders’ spirit of not being afraid of difficulties and always climbing the peak of science can be used to inspire students, stimulate their interest in learning, and make them glad and willing to learn.

5.3 Establishing teaching materials matching the course ideological and political elements

Professional teachers and ideological and political teachers form a team of ideological and political teachers, collect materials related to ideological and political courses, dig deep into the ideological and political elements of professional courses, and understand students’ ideological trends, so as to compile ideological and political teaching plans for the Crop Breeding Course and make Powerpoint slides for ideological and political education, and compile the corresponding teaching materials, and constantly improve the teaching materials supporting the ideological and political course.