On March 16, excellent strawberry varieties from different production areas were showcased at the 10th International Strawberry Symposium. How can we achieve short-cycle, large-scale, and on-site strawberry seedling cultivation that enables them to bear fruit with a unique flavor? Researcher Wenping Xu from the SJTU School of Agricultural and Biology led the team in developing a strawberry seedling technology featuring “pure varieties, fewer pesticides, and fewer chemical fertilizers”. This technology provided the Symposium with core innovations for displaying breeder mother seedlings, original seedling products, and high-tech strawberries that excel in color, aroma, and taste. The technology is expected to open up a market worth billions of US dollars.
Delicious strawberries wake up the flavor of childhood
“Why do people always say that strawberries don’t taste like they did in our childhood?” Wenping Xu explains with a smile, “In open nature, a strawberry variety will be continuously infiltrated by microorganisms in the process of seedling growing year after year, which will lead to the degradation of the variety, but we usually can’t see it with our naked eyes. Virus infiltration is the main cause of strawberry varietal degradation, and the fruits produced from degraded seedlings carrying viruses have a change in flavor accordingly. Our achievement is to innovate the original strawberry seedling production technology system, so that enable the seedlings shake off ‘bondage’ of virus and therefore solve the problem of variety degradation, reproduce the flavor of strawberries in our childhood.”
More than a decade ago, Wenping Xu was more concerned about solving the water, fertilizer and pest management problems in the strawberry industry at the planting end, expecting to reduce the number of pesticides and fertilizers applied through the progress of cultivation technology and improve the quality of fruits. However, with the deepening of the research, he found that the source of the problem lies in the overall deviation of strawberry seedling quality. Subsequently, he began to explore the innovation in original strawberry seedling production technology system, to solve the fundamental problem of poor seedling quality from the source, making it no longer necessary for the growers to worry about the poor seedling growth and expect to promote seedling growth by “feeding” more fertilizer.
The innovation of strawberry original seedling production belongs to the platform technology system of the nursery seedling industry and has a wide range of applications. Nowadays, the technical team not only applies this technology to strawberries, but also to the cultivation of plant varieties such as lilies, ginger, kiwis, blackberries, figs, coffee, pinellia ternata, codonopsis pilosula and aquatic plants, as well as the expansion and propagation of endangered plants, which provides a huge space for the development and enhancement of the nursery seedling industry.
Small strawberry prying big industry
Strawberry is an herbaceous plant of Rosaceae family and a cash crop with high nutritional value, known as “Queen of Fruits”. China’s strawberry production scale ranks first in the world, and fruit sales generates about RMB 100 billion yuan annually. However, the traditional strawberry seedling cultivation is mainly based on stolon nursery, which is characterized by widespread virus infection, serious degradation of varieties, and low quality of seedlings, which seriously restricts the high-quality development of the strawberry industry. And through the new mode of detoxification seedling group cultivation and substrate seedling, it is possible to cultivate high-quality detoxification original seedlings in a short time, featuring strong seedling resistance and high survival rate, and enabling rapid scaling up for production, helping the strawberry industry to upgrade and develop. “According to the data of Chinese Society for Horticultural Science Strawberry Branch, the current strawberry seedling market is about RMB 20 billion yuan, while this type of high-quality detoxification seedlings only shares less than 10% of the market, the potential of this segment market is huge,” Wenping Xu said.
“I am a nursery service worker, engaged in strawberry nursery guidance for many years, usually see a lot of growers being plagued by root rot, bacterial angular spot and other diseases during seedling nursery process. In September every year, when strawberry planting season begins, a large number of seedlings will die after planting, therefore replanting is usually urgent. For the growers and I, it is the worst concerned period of time. Sometimes we can’t even sleep at night. Later on, we came into contact with Mr. Xu’s new type of detoxification seedling, and found that it has excellent disease and cold resistance. More than 100 growers we serve used the detoxified strawberry seedlings. They found that not only less pesticides and fertilizers were needed, but also the increased yield brought them additional income of RMB 20,000-40,000 yuan per mu,” said Yuntao Wang, a grower service worker in Duanwang Village, Mancheng District, Baoding City, Hebei Province.
“One of the major shortcomings and bottlenecks of the strawberry industry is the low quality of seedlings, and the current histoculture and detoxification technology of the industry is at low level. We develop this technology in the hope of helping growers to solve the planting problems such as high rate of dead seedlings, diseases, difficulties in replanting seedlings, and poor ecomomic benefits. We expect that with this technology, we can provide seedling breeders with high-quality original seedlings to breed strawberry seedlings, so that the seedlings will bear sweet and healthy fruits, and we also hope to make growers feel at ease in the process of planting strawberries,” Wenping Xu said.
Based on the technology, Wenping Xu and his partners began to verify the feasibility and maturity of the technology in 2021, and established a company, Shanghai Jiaomeng Zhonghui Biotechnology Development Co., Ltd. (SJZBD) in 2025. “So far, we have established partnership with more than 100 companies and producer cooperatives in more than 10 provinces, including Jiangsu, Shandong, Zhejiang, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hunan, Guizhou, Shaanxi, Hebei, Shanxi, Guangxi and Guangdong, covering dozens of strawberry varieties. In 2025, we have more than 200 new intending customers for strawberry original seedlings. During the 10th International Strawberry Symposium, more than 100 companies expressed their intention to cooperate with us. Many of them have been planting strawberries for more than 10 years. At the same time, we have been engaged in the technological maturation for application in aquatic and terrestrial herbaceous plants (including Chinese medicinal herbs), vines, woody and other plant varieties, cumulatively more than 60 varieties. The technology is expected to pry the global industrial market share of USD 12 billion,” said Yuanyuan Li, CEO of SJZBD.
From the laboratory to the field, a series of combinations to help the transformation of scientific and technological achievements
Since 2020, as the only pilot institution in China, SJTU has been carrying out special reforms for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements of universities, and has started to explore the transformation of scientific and technological achievements in the mode of “full empowerment (implementation by the researchers)” in large quantities. Wenping Xu has been thinking and exploring whether this achievement can be commercialized. In 2021, Wenping Xu and Wenjie Zhang, a student from the SJTU School of Agriculture and Biology, carried out the proof of concept of this technology, and in 2025, Wenping Xu and Wenjie Zhang established a start-up with a joint operation team, formally launching the entrepreneurial journey led by “class teacher+class monitor” to promote the scientific and technological achievements from the laboratory to the field.
The entrepreneurial journey is not smooth sailing, from the “bookshelf” to “product shelves”, the transformation of scientific and technological achievements in the field of agriculture is facing more complex difficulties and challenges. “For the transformation of agricultural scientific and technological achievements, capitals were interested in but lack of confidence, planting companies had the motivation but lack of investment, the proof of concept for scientific and technological achievements also faced with a lack of support. We were once at the bottom of the valley, could not see the future of the transformation,” Wenping Xu recalled, “However, with the surpportive policies of SJTU in scientific and technological achievements special reform pilot, empowerment reform, and the due diligence exemption management approach for scientific and technological achievements transformation, etc., the challenges of capital and market we met in transformation process have been solved, which undoubtedly gave us a shot in the arm, and we really understand that the untransformed scientific and technological achievements are the biggest waste.”
The advantages of scientific research achievements, professionals and professional services are indispensable for the successful transformation of scientific research achievements. “‘Professional operation team + SJTU technical support + SJTU technology transfer assistance’ is a kind of entrepreneurial mode with complete elements, and the combination solves the problems of trust, investment, operation and researchers unfamiliar with science and innovation policies and market in the process of transformation of scientific and technological achievements. The series of combinations and SJTU Proof of Concept alliance resources fully supported our team in the important links such as project maturation, team building, business opportunity exploration, and financing, which helped us walk through the most difficult moments and accelerated the progress and efficiency of strawberry scientific and technological achievements transformation,” Wenping Xu said.
Scientific and technological achievements empower reform by driving innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic and social benefits. There are many similar cases, such as Researcher Wenping Xu’s transformation of scientific and technological achievements at SJTU. One of these cases completed the entire online approval process in just one day. During the ‘full empowerment’ pilot, SJTU discovered that more than 60% of the entrepreneurial enterprises established by SJTU teachers had a regurgitation feeding model. Many of these companies have also established joint R&D platforms with SJTU, engaged in joint personnel training, and provided students with numerous internships and job opportunities. At the same time, a total of 191 ‘sunshine’ sci-tech enterprises (excluding derivative enterprises) have been established through valuation investment, implementation by the researchers, and compliance rectification. Of these, 3 are unicorn companies, 4 are potential unicorn companies, 4 are small giant companies, and 11 are preparing to declare an IPO.
