AWARDEE OF AGRONOMY PRIZE

GAI JUNYI

Gai Junyi, born in Wuxi, Jiangsu, on June 5, 1936, a plant breeder and geneticist, professor in Plant Genetics and Breeding at Nanjing Agricultural University and director of the Chinese National Center for Soybean Improvement (CNCSI). He graduated from agronomy department in 1957 and finished his graduate study in 1968 in Nanjing Agricultural College. He is also the vice president of the Chinese Crops Society and the Chinese Society of Soybean Science, and was the former president of Nanjing Agricultural University, the Eighth National Congress Representative and the member of Continuing Committee of the World Soybean Research Conference V. He has been devoting his effort in the study on soybean breeding and statistical genetics, and the establishment of the CNCSI. He has published more than 400 papers and monographs. He was awarded a Prize of China Agricultural Science and Education Foundation in 1998. He was elected  the academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2001.
His major contributions to the science and technology were as follows:
1.He collected, studied and revealed the genetic potential of 12 thousand soybean landraces from southern China; established eight series of research programs on germplasm screening, inheritance, genetic improvement of high yield, resistance to diseases and insects, quality traits, and male sterility; developed a great number of elite enhanced breeding materials; therefore, was granted a National Rank 2 Science and Technology Progress Award. He made the germplasm study ahead to be integrated with soybean genomics and, through cooperation, established a genetic map and mapped five linked genes resistant to SMV. He successfully finished the analyses of pedigrees of the 651 soybean cultivars released during 1923-1995 in China. He established a new classification system of soybean eco-regions in China and a classification system of maturity groups that can be connected with the international tradition. He found some evidence of molecular genetic distances to support a neglected hypothesis on the origin of G. max being from southern China wild population of G. soja. In addition, he obtained other 10 provincial or ministerial level science and technology progress awards.
2.He was in charge of the national key program on soybean cultivar development for 15 years, and released about 20 cultivars, including Nannong 73-935, Nannong 88-31, etc. utilized in the lower and middle Yangtze valleys.
3.He extended the polygene genetic model into major gene plus minor gene mixed inheritance model for the inheritance of quantitative traits, and developed an analytical system being capable of identifying 1-3 major genes' individual effects and the minor genes' integrated effects at the same time.
4.He has trained or co-trained more than one hundred Ph.D and MS students, among them, some are well-established scholars.