NPC deputy helps China's potatoes go global

File photo shows Shen Yanfen, a deputy to the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, displaying potatoes at a potato farm. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)

"I was sort of tricked into studying potatoes," Shen Yanfen said with a laugh. The remark came during a recent interview on the sidelines of the ongoing annual sessions of China's top legislature and top political advisory body.

Shen is an NPC deputy and director of the China Southern Potato Research Center in Enshi, central China's Hubei Province.

The story goes back nearly three decades. At 22, fresh out of university, Shen was told by a classmate that the research center in Enshi was "a great place to work." She went there full of expectations, and never left, spending the following years moving between the laboratory and the fields.

Today, Shen serves as a deputy chief scientist of the National Potato Industry Technology System. Under her leadership, Enshi potatoes, known for their small size, have gained popularity on Chinese social media and found markets overseas. Meanwhile, other germplasm innovation achievements, including the E-Potato and Nanzhong series, have become hallmarks of China's seed industry on the world stage.

Yet Shen is quick to credit those who came before her, saying she is standing on the shoulders of giants. The China Southern Potato Research Center, founded in 1984, has independently bred more than 20 early-, mid- and late-maturing varieties and trained a generation of potato experts, including Xie Conghua, Liu Jiemin and Tian Henglin.

Shen and her team have spent nearly three decades developing virus-free seed potato breeding techniques suited to mountainous terrain, successfully breeding 18 new varieties across the E-Potato and Nanzhong series. They have also collected and preserved more than 1,500 potato germplasm resources and worked with breeders nationwide to help end the country's reliance on foreign seed sources. Through international cooperation, the E-Potato series has expanded overseas, raising the global profile of China's potato seed industry.

She has led her team to establish demonstration farms in mountainous areas in southwest China, promote improved varieties, virus-free seed potatoes and supporting cultivation techniques, and train technology demonstration households in rural areas. The cumulative cultivation area of E-Potato No. 1 through No. 16 and Nanzhong 101 through 110 has surpassed 20 million mu (1.33 million hectares).

In Enshi's main potato-producing areas, per-capita income from potatoes has exceeded 2,500 yuan ($360), and Enshi potatoes are now exported to Japan, Singapore, South Korea and beyond.

Now serving her second consecutive term as an NPC deputy, Shen has submitted more than 50 agriculture-related suggestions.

"I want more potatoes to travel from the hills to the rest of China, and then to the world," she said.