A joint team from Huazhong Agricultural University, Jiangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and Suzhou Lasso Biotech Co., Ltd. has successfully launched the "Zhongxin You No. 1" solid-phase gene chip for Brassica napus after six years of research. The product carries over 17,000 genome-wide background markers and more than 1,500 functional loci, ending the long-standing situation where the solid-phase chip spotting process was controlled by a few American companies.

The research and development process was not a smooth path. The team accumulated over 1,600 lab notebooks, wrote more than 2,700 experimental reports, and collected over 10 million scanned images. During the technical validation phase, the failure rate once reached 99.9%, with approximately 80 billion microspheres scrapped cumulatively. The turning point came in 2024, benefiting from industry-university-research collaborations with institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Nanjing University. A group of post-90s and post-95s researchers turned the spotting process from blueprints into reality, building a solid manufacturing foundation for the chip.

Once the chip manufacturing pathway was established, the richness of key gene locus information became the core factor determining breeding efficiency. In 2025, Professor Yi Bin's team from the National Rapeseed Improvement Center at Huazhong Agricultural University took the lead in providing a large amount of key gene locus information. Hua Wei, Chief Scientist at the Oil Crops Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, also led a team to provide support, rapidly expanding the gene locus data from a few thousand to 20,000. This basically covers the core needs of universal research on Brassica napus, forming a high-precision reference set of key gene information for rapeseed.

To accelerate the transformation of technological achievements into industrial applications, the R&D team established a high-frequency communication mechanism with enterprises, bridging the gap between technological breakthroughs and industrial application. In October 2025, "Zhongxin You No. 1" was officially launched. Li Shuyu, a researcher at the Jiangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences, stated: "Previously, breeding a new variety might take 10 years; now it can be shortened to as fast as 3 years. A single test costs only 25 yuan, and results are available within 72 hours."

"Zhongxin You No. 1" is not the endpoint; version 2.0 is already in preparation and is expected to contain 60,000 gene loci. Currently, a product matrix covering major livestock and poultry such as pigs, chickens, cattle, and sheep, as well as key crops like wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and rapeseed, has also been formed. Solid-phase chip technology continues to provide support for breeding work.