Technology R&D

The “Grain Conservation Technology Innovation Consortium for Feed Use”, initiated and established by New Hope Group, works on grain conservation for feed use by endeavoring to overcome a series of core technological problems with grain conservation along the feed production and consumption chain, with a focus on three key steps of breeding, feed and farming. An international think tank was formed by academicians and famous industry experts upon invitation, and technology investment funds and state-level associations were brought in to work with downstream and upstream companies and scientific institutes to exploit the driving force of biotechnology and digital technology, significantly increase the technical resilience of national grain security, support the stable and sustainable industry development, ensure China’s grain security and build a green, low-carbon agricultural industry.

To address the demands of China’s meat duck industry for lean-type meat duck varieties with high feed conversion rates, by utilizing China’s genetic resources of meat duck, New Hope Liuhe, through multiyear cooperative selective breeding with the Institute of Animal Sciences of CAAS, developed a new meat duck variety called “Zhongxin white-feathered meat duck” multiline cross system with autonomous intellectual property and pure Chinese bloodline by using quantitative genetics breeding theory and modern breeding equipment and technology. This achievement broke through the monopoly of foreign meat duck breeding and has a variety of characteristics such as high resistance to stress and disease, fast growth speed, high feed conversion rate, high quality of meat and high intramuscular fat and breast meat rates and thigh meat rate, with various production performance indicators already reaching internationally advanced levels such as grandparental and parental breeding ducks and commercial-generation meat duck. The relevant achievements earned the company the “outstanding technological innovation prize” of scientific and technological achievement awards from Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the first prize of Beijing scientific and technological progress awards.

We developed a domestically leading pig breeding and production management software system called “HUGE HOPE” in-house: through the critical trait breeding value computing engine HugeBLUP, this system achieves 6-trait, one-step ssGBLULP breeding value computation; screens and identifies genetic locus that controls key economic traits for use in development of proprietary gene sequencing chips; based on gene chip sequencing, variety identification, genetic relationship analysis and genealogical reconstruction are performed for externally introduced breeding pigs; genomic selection is performed for piglets and early selection and retention conducted to increase the selection and retention accuracies and accelerate genetic progress; based on overall planning of boars and sows, mating boars are directly determined, and strong control exerted in the selection and mating process to achieve population-wide optimal matching and breed high-index varieties; based on technologies such as machine vision and deep learning, it achieves automatic detection of routine phenotypes of breeding pigs such as back fat, loin eye area, body measurement and weight.

The Company upgraded a food safety management system across the whole industry chain covering breeding, farming, feed, slaughtering and downstream processing, which fully upgrades and iterates the “HQ-industry-branch and subsidiary” three-level food safety and quality management system and audit system for companywide shared governance. It is traceable throughout the whole process from field to table, functions to strictly control food safety risks and product quality, and pays great attention to frontend control, process optimization, standard system, training and appraisal, technological innovation and IT drive, thus achieving “zero occurrence” of major food safety accidents and effectively safeguarding public health and safety and healthy and nutritious food for the consumer side. The Company actively participates in setting and revision of national, industry, local and group standards and leads the industry to value food safety, as a result of which the Company won honorary titles such as China Golden Tripod Award for CSR of Food Companies and a role model for construction of meat food safety credibility system in China.