Zhongshuang No. 9, an elite conventional rapeseed variety developed by Dr. Wang Hanzhong and his team from the Oil Crops Research Institute (OCRI) of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), won the 9th laurel crown for the largest area of planting conventional double-low rapeseed among the top five ranked major varieties in China for the year 2012.

Zhongshuang No. 9 is the first cultivar stacking eight dominant features including low erucic acid and low glucosinolate (double low), high yield, high oil content and pro-tein, strong resistance to lodging, resistance to fungi Sclerotinia and virus. It has comparative advantage in its qualitative and quantitative, such as high quality vs. high yield, high quality vs. stress tolerance, high oil content vs. high yield or high protein content during the production.

Statistics from the National Agro-Tech Extension and Service Center (NATESC) shows that, for 9 consecutive years from 2005 to 2013, Zhongshuang No. 9 was one of the top five major rapeseed varieties with huge planting acreage in China, and it has become an excellent parental germplasm for rapeseed breeding throughout the coun-try.
 

The average oil content and yield of Zhongshuang No. 9 within two rounds field trails reached 42.66% and 172.72kg/acre which was significantly beyond that of the control. The fatty acid components in it are very rich, its meal is a high quality protein source. Especially, it was ranked at the top for the level of low content of erucic acid in the world, and some new genes for low erucic acid have been identified from it, which resolved the problem caused by monolithic gene source for low erucic acid in the world.

The variety proved as one of the best Sclerotinia-resistant rapeseed varieties in China, and has been advanced to the world level now. The average incidences of Sclerotinia and virus diseases recorded as 6.83% and 0.4% respectively among national and re-gional trials. This record confirmed that the capacity of disease and lodging-resistance of Zhongshuang No. 9 is the best among all trials arranged for all participating varie-ties. The predominant features of Zhongshuang No. 9 lower the cost of production significantly as it will reduce amount of pesticide utilization, hence raise the farmers’ income.
 

Zhongshuang No. 9 could meet the demands for vegetable and edible oil. Looking at the flowering stalk in spring it is nutritious, tastes crisp and tender, the vitamin C and proteins contents are twice higher than that of local cultivars. Farmers can not only collect certain amount of flowering stalks in early spring but also can harvest enough seeds during summer, which provide it the unique benefit termed as killing two birds with one stone. The recorded remarkable performance of it, suggests high advanced stability and adaptability in the large-scale production.

Back to the history, Zhongshuang No. 9, passed the Hubei provincial inspection in 2002 and national evaluation in 2008, it has been awarded the second prize on Na-tional Scientific and Technological Progress in 2006. And moreover, its popularity to farmers in China has more exceptional than ever due to constant purification and re-juvenation by breeders and income improvement of farmers.