According to the Hong Kong Wen Wei Po companies in some developed countries collect and rob genetic resources from developing countries including China through means such as cooperative research, purchases and even stealing.

The report cited authoritative persons as saying that the sharp reduction of China's biological diversity is caused by genetic resource loss, aggravation of foreign species invasion and the negative impact brought about by release of trans-genetic biological products into the environment.

This ministerial-level official cited wild soybeans as an example. Ninety percent soybean resources in the world are distributed in China. However, some of these resources have been stolen by foreign companies and developed into patented products. For now China lacks necessary species protection measures. Many valuable genetic resources have been lost.

The Soybean Committee of the Crop Science Society of China believes the vast number of China's wild soybean resources is distributed in a wide range of areas with great variations. There are 6,172 wild soybean germ plasms which have been preserved in storage, accounting for 90 percent of the total number in the world. These precious resources contain inestimable production and research potentials.

As learned wild soybeans are the primitive species of cultivated soybeans and precious genetic resources of China and even the world. Their aboriginal habitats - northeast China and Shandong used to have large wild soybean communities, which later decreased year by year. Twenty years ago communities could still be found by ditches, roadsides, reed pools and riversides. Now most wild soybean habitats have become grazing lands, cultivated lands, ponds, oil fields and highways. Wild soybeans are rarely seen today.

By People's Daily Online