Agricultural Biotechnology: The SKLA, Salt-Tolerant Soybeans, and the Journey from Gene to the Saline-Alkali Fields of Gansu

The most compelling aspect of CUHK’s salt-tolerant soybean research is that it has genuinely been planted in the soil—a rare, complete chain linking Hong Kong’s fundamental research (gene discovery), breeding collaborations in mainland China (variety development), and practical cultivation on the saline-alkali lands of northwest China (industrial application). This article is a factual archive for the Reference Area (04 Research). No credibility badges are assigned; every item is linked to an academic or official source. The scholars involved are public figures, named according to their public records. This account first establishes the institutional home for this research—the State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology (SKLA)—and then unfolds the scientific journey from gene to field, and even into space.

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# I. The Problem: Saline-Alkali Land and Food Security

Vast tracts of global arable land are degraded by salinisation, rendering them incapable of supporting ordinary crops. Is it possible to breed salt-tolerant soybean varieties that can make these saline-alkali lands productive again? This is a question with both profound scientific difficulty and tangible real-world significance—it directly concerns the utilisation of marginal land and food security. The answer offered by the Soybean Research Centre within CUHK’s School of Life Sciences is a journey spanning over a decade, bridging fundamental research and field application. The institutional vessel for this work is CUHK’s State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology.

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# II. The Origins of the State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology (SKLA)

The establishment of the State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology (SKLA) at The Chinese University of Hong Kong follows a clear institutional lineage. According to a CUHK press release^※, the laboratory was approved for establishment by the Ministry of Science and Technology on 2 April 2008, becoming CUHK’s second State Key Laboratory at the time (the University's SKL in translational oncology had been approved earlier, in 2006).

This founding did not start from scratch. SKLA’s talent and academic foundation came from CUHK’s Institute of Plant and Agricultural Biotechnology, which had previously received two rounds of funding under the University Grants Committee’s Areas of Excellence scheme, totalling over HK$63 million (a 10-year period, UGC AoE scheme, 2000s). The laboratory was formally inaugurated on 13 December 2008.

# Founding Team and Key Collaborators

The leadership structure at the time of founding, as recorded in a CUHK press release^※, was as follows:

In terms of major collaborating institutions, according to official sources, SKLA established a partnership pattern with China Agricultural University (CAU) as its primary mainland collaborator. Beyond this, the laboratory engages with the China National Hybrid Rice R&D Centre, the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Crop Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the China National Rice Research Institute (Hangzhou), as well as Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Yangzhou University. Its international collaborators span research units in the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan.

# Three Core Research Pillars

According to the SKLA official website^※, the laboratory currently focuses on three core directions:

This framework is a direct continuation of the founding mission. As noted in an official press release^※, quoting Professor Samuel Sun, the laboratory’s fundamental goal was to "combine the wisdom of traditional breeding with modern biotechnology to produce new rice varieties with enhanced yield and nutritional value"—because rice is the staple food for roughly half the world’s population.

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# III. Rice Biofortification: The Sun Sai-ming Team's Collaboration with the Gates Foundation

One of SKLA’s earliest internationally prominent research projects concerned the biofortification of rice with lysine. Lysine is the most deficient essential amino acid in rice seeds and represents a major nutritional shortfall for populations that depend on rice as a staple. According to a CUHK press release^※, SKLA launched an international collaborative project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for HK$88 million (approved in the 2000s), joining forces with six laboratories from four countries to enhance the nutritional value of rice. This project was deeply integrated with SKLA’s synthetic and functional genomics platform, embodying the founding institutional design of "leveraging Hong Kong’s international networking advantages to link with mainland resources."

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# IV. The Scientific Journey of the Soybean Genome: From 31 Genomes to a Salt-Tolerance Gene

The breakthroughs in soybean research were led by Professor Lam Hon-ming. According to the CUHK School of Life Sciences^※, he has been deeply engaged in soybean stress-tolerance research since his return to CUHK in 1997—a focus now spanning over two decades. The strategic pivot in this research lay in a return to wild soybeans: cultivated soybeans, having undergone prolonged artificial selection, may have lost some stress-resistance genes during domestication. Wild soybeans (Glycine soja), shaped by natural environmental selection, retain a richer reservoir of stress-tolerance genetic resources.

# 2010: A Nature Genetics Cover Article on 31 Soybean Genomes

According to a paper published in Nature Genetics^※, Professor Lam’s team, in collaboration with BGI, re-sequenced the genomes of 31 wild and cultivated soybeans, systematically revealing the patterns of genetic diversity between them and the signatures of artificial selection. This was among the largest comparative soybean genomic studies at the time, and the results were published as a cover article in December 2010. The core finding was that the allelic diversity in wild soybeans is significantly higher than that in cultivars, meaning that human selection during domestication had already caused a massive loss of genetic resources. These "lost" genes represent a potential treasure trove for the improvement of modern soybeans.

# 2014: Cloning the Salt-Tolerance Gene GmCHX1

According to a paper published in Nature Communications^※ and a CUHK School of Life Sciences page^※, in 2014, the team identified and cloned a novel salt-tolerance gene, GmCHX1, from wild soybeans through whole-genome sequencing. GmCHX1 is an ion transporter gene, presumed to confer salt tolerance by lowering the intracellular sodium-to-potassium (Na⁺/K⁺) ratio. This discovery provided a direct target for subsequent molecular marker-assisted breeding.

The "Seeking Help from the Wild" Motif: This approach echoes the conceptual shifts described in this archive for other CUHK breakthroughs, such as optical fibre and NIPT—when answers to enhancing salt tolerance could not be found in cultivated soybeans, the team turned to the neglected wild relatives. A true breakthrough often comes from reframing the question of "where to look."

# 2019: The First Reference-Grade Wild Soybean Genome

Moving from the population-level patterns of 31 genomes to a precise map for a single species: according to a 2019 CUHK press release^※, the team, in collaboration with BGI Genomics and other institutions, used third-generation sequencing technology to announce on 3 April 2019 the completion of the world’s first reference-grade wild soybean genome. This was a chromosome-level, high-quality genome assembly of the wild soybean accession W05, with results also published in Nature Communications.

The Value of a "Reference-Grade Genome": A reference-grade genome is like drawing a high-precision "genetic map" for a species. With this map, the team discovered a series of important structural differences between wild and cultivated soybeans, including a translocation event between chromosomes 11 and 13, and a large genomic inversion at the I locus controlling seed coat colour—the latter providing the genetic explanation for the domestication mystery of how soybeans transitioned from a dark to a yellow seed coat. This foundational achievement transformed the discovery of salt-tolerance genes from a matter of chance into a systematic, map-guided search.

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# V. Industrial Application: "Longhuang" Soybeans on Gansu's Saline-Alkali Land

The ultimate outlet for fundamental research is a crop that can grow in the soil. According to a CUHK feature story^※, Professor Lam Hon-ming collaborated with mainland breeding experts including Professor Zhang Guohong of the Gansu Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Professor Shao Guihua of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Using a combination of molecular markers and traditional breeding methods, they successfully developed three salt- and drought-tolerant soybean varieties: Longhuang 1, Longhuang 2, and Longhuang 3, which passed formal testing in Gansu Province.

According to the official feature story^※, by 2021, the three varieties had been planted across more than 40,700 hectares in the dryland region of the Gansu Loess Plateau, spanning an area roughly 2,000 kilometres across. The research has also extended to South Africa, where a 20-hectare experimental farm was established to help local smallholders tackle food security challenges.

From a Hong Kong Laboratory to the Fields of Gansu: This is a rare, complete chain—fundamental research in Hong Kong, breeding collaboration in mainland China, and actual planting on the saline-alkali lands of northwest China. It ensures that CUHK’s agricultural research lives not only on paper and in genomes but as real crops growing on marginal land.

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# VI. Soybeans Have Also Been to Space

The reach of Professor Lam's research extended to low Earth orbit in 2023. According to a CUHK press release^※, on 10 May 2023, SKLA, in collaboration with the China Manned Space Agency’s office, the China Resources Research Institute of Science and Technology, and the Shenzhou Biotechnology Group, sent soybean rhizobia samples aboard the Tianzhou-6 cargo spacecraft to the Chinese space station Tiangong. This was the first Hong Kong agricultural research project launched into space. The project aims to screen for novel strains with more efficient nitrogen-fixing capacity by comparing genetic variations in the rhizobia inside and outside the space environment, pioneering cutting-edge ideas for climate-resilient agriculture.

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# VII. Significance: The "Three Characteristics of CUHK Research" and the National Dimension within a Soybean

The salt-tolerant soybean research vividly embodies three characteristics of CUHK research: originality (discovering new genes and completing the first reference-grade genome from wild soybeans), translatability (the complete chain from gene to variety to field), and societal relevance (directly confronting the nationally significant, livelihood-related problems of saline-alkali land use and food security).

Institutionally, SKLA is positioned as a "Partner Laboratory"—with China Agricultural University as its primary mainland supporting unit. It strategically aligns Hong Kong's strengths in international networking, talent reserves, and modern management with mainland China's advantages in economic scale, research volume, and natural resources. This means SKLA is not a parochial institution confined to a Hong Kong campus but a node within the national agricultural science and technology innovation network—its research outputs flow to the saline-alkali fields of Gansu, its genomic data is openly shared with scientists worldwide, and its rhizobia hitch a ride on a cargo spacecraft to the Chinese space station.

Within CUHK’s narrative of research, the salt-tolerant soybean is often listed alongside optical fibre, NIPT, and network coding as a signature breakthrough. But its unique warmth lies in this: it ultimately lands in the soil and in the harvests of farmers.

Further reading: Research Achievement Overview, State Key Laboratories, China Studies, Think Tanks, Earth and Space, Research Output and Spin-offs.

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