The "father" of asexual seeds shares the breakthrough meaning for global agriculture

Within the framework of the “Science for Life” series of talks under the VinFuture 2025 Science and Technology Week, the talk show “Innovation in Agriculture and Food” held on the afternoon of December 3 attracted attention with the appearance of speakers who are world-famous faces in the fields of agriculture and biology.

Among them, Professor Raphaël Mercier, Director of the Department of Chromosome Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Genetics, Germany - a leading figure in molecular genetics, shared about cloning seeds, a breakthrough invention of great significance in the field of global agriculture.

Professor Raphaël Mercier shared with the press about the breakthrough in his scientific research career as well as his expectations for cooperation with Vietnam from this invention.

- Professor, please share more about the breakthrough invention of asexual seeds - a research that is considered a breakthrough in your scientific research career. How do you evaluate the contributions of this research to the field of global agriculture?

Professor Raphaël Mercier : 15 years ago, my colleagues and I studied some types of plants that reproduce asexually in nature. These are some types of plants that do not need fertilization or pollination to produce seeds, such as dandelions. Their petals help to disperse the seeds. The study of this mechanism came entirely from observing nature. Then I realized that this research could be useful for agriculture.

Asexual reproduction is based on mitosis, which does not include meiosis and fertilization as traditional but "transforms the meiosis division process into a simpler process" to create 2 copies of genes. F1 hybrid plants are strong, there is no need to control the quality of the parent plants, only the quality of the hybrid.

Specifically, when crossing the parent plants, we get the F1 generation with extremely superior traits. But if the farmer takes the seeds of the F1 plant and sows them in the next crop (creating F2), these good traits will be separated and lost. Productivity will drop dramatically.

That is why farmers are forced to buy new F1 seeds after each crop season at an expensive cost. This is a big barrier for developing countries and small-scale farmers, making it difficult for them to access advanced agricultural achievements.

Asexual reproduction allows the preservation of desirable characteristics and the rapid generation of pure lines, which can be used for many crops, helping farmers. With the research of “clonal seeds” that can be applied to all types of crops, it allows to increase the yield by 20-30% for any crop.

This is a great contribution to world agriculture. I want to see the widespread adoption of asexual seed technology, including in organic farming.

- Vietnam is one of the world's leading rice exporting countries but is also one of the countries suffering from the serious impacts of climate change. According to the Professor, what solutions does the Vietnamese agricultural sector need to both increase productivity, maintain its position as a rice exporting country, and respond to climate change?

Professor Raphaël Mercier : Vietnam, as well as all other rice-producing countries, needs to apply all kinds of technology such as AI; gene, IoT… in the field of agriculture and biology to improve the quality and yield of rice; including cloning technology. From increasing the yield per acre of rice, with the same number of crops, cultivation activities will be less, thus reducing emissions during the cultivation process.

- Could you please share more about the difficulties, advantages and next steps of this research?

Professor Raphaël Mercier : This is a basic research, so the support role of the State and units in the research process is very important. One difficulty we encounter is that because this is a collective research project, finding suitable partners is very difficult. My partners are everywhere, from France to California (USA). Another point is that this research is still in the final testing phase.

I hope that through the VinFuture 2025 Science and Technology Week, my research can attract the attention of Vietnamese scientists, thereby opening up a direction for research cooperation in selecting suitable hybrid rice varieties for cloning by asexual seed method for fields in Vietnam.

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