Major progress has been achieved in the research on "Seed Selection and Application of New Breeds of Seawater-resistant Vegetables", a project of marine biotechnology in the sector of resources and environment in the 863 Program of MOST. Presently, the largest seawater-resistant vegetable pilot test base and project implementing park have been built in Dafeng, Jiangsu Province. This is one of the ten key S&T projects in Dafeng City.

Through screening of resources, breeding of new kinds of salt-proof and seawater-resistant vegetables by cellular and gene engineering, and integrating with modern agricultural cultivation techniques and balanced nutrient solution recipe technologies, the project finally realized the seawater vegetable planting on low beach saline-alkali land. Currently the planting area of the pilot base has exceeded three thousand mu (1mu=1/15 hectare).

The product of "sea asparagus" in this project has already obtained Class A certificate for green food and the certificate for organic food. Since the implementation of this project, 200 vegetable greenhouses, a project implementing park exceeding the scale of 3,000 mu and the industrialized production base have been built, amounting to an accumulative total of over ten thousand mu planting area. The sales network for the products have been set up in Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou.

Since its implementation, this project has already applied for 12 patents/new variety copyrights, of which 9 for state patents of invention, 1 for Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and 2 for new variety copyrights. Over 20 papers have been published, 12 doctor postgraduates and 12 master postgraduates have been cultivated.