Cold, rainy weather and complicated geography that have kept man at bay have proved blessings for the eco-environment of Shennongjia State Nature Reserve in central China.

Location, above all, has been the major reason rare and ancient plant and animal species at Shennongjia have flourished, experts say.

Dubbed a "Noah's Arc" for animals and plants in the glacial period, the Shennongjia area in modern-day Hubei province remained virtually unchanged during the Quarternary Period some 2.5 million years ago, when glacier activity was prevalent elsewhere in the region.

Chinese botanist Zheng Zhong said that Shennongjia has preserved an array of plants that existed in the Tertiary Period and is widely called a home of living plant fossils.

According to zoologist Yang Qiren, Shennongjia has about 60 species of state-protected animals and is the place where albino animals roam and the legendary Bigfoot originated.

The shifting of the Himalayan mountains produced Shennongjia and left the area full of mountains, ravines and forests. Shennongjia also served as a vital passage for migrating animals.

Animals and plants have been well protected since China started construction on the 70,000-hectare nature reserve at Shennongjia in 1986. The reserve has 2,280 kinds of vascular bundle plants, including 50 kinds of rare and endangered species.

Shennongjia Nature Reserve is recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as one of the world's biosphere preservation zones in 1990.

Chinese scientists are taking advantage of the rich wild plant gene resources at Shennongjia. The Agricultural Modernization Institute of Hubei Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences has specially built an artificial plant resource gene bank where more than 11,000 plant samples obtained from Shennongjia reserve are kept for transgenic experiments.

According to Yu Changyi, the head of the institute, they have successfully developed a fine-quality maize strain and high- nutrition, high-output spinach by transplanting plant genes from Shennongjia.