Jing Pengfei (middle) and two farmers check on the growth of wheat in Yuncheng, Shanxi, on June 11. ZHU XINGXIN/CHINA DAILY

　　Jing Pengfei, the 37-year-old head of the agricultural seed station of the Yuncheng Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, has received the 2025 New Era Youth Pioneer award for his role in modernizing seed breeding and crop management systems along the Yellow River Basin.

　　The award, presented jointly by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China and the All-China Youth Federation, follows a series of State-level agricultural milestones in Yuncheng, a major wheat-producing region in northern China's Shanxi province.

　　According to data from the local bureau of agriculture, the city's high-quality wheat seed coverage rate has reached 98.5 percent, with total cultivation areas exceeding 93,000 hectares. Yuncheng has established eight national-level and 19 provincial-level seed production bases — the highest concentration within Shanxi — with multiple local crop varieties added to the national registry of crop germplasm (genetic material used for plant breeding).

　　Jing, a native of Yuncheng, joined the city's agricultural bureau in 2013 after graduating with a genetics degree from a university in Xi'an, Shaanxi province. "Having gained knowledge and skills, I wanted to return to my hometown to work directly on the front line of variety testing and new variety promotion," Jing said.

　　In 2017, as the only participant from Shanxi, Jing traveled to Germany for a Sino-German youth agricultural capacity-building project. The standardized seed breeding systems and refined cultivation management models abroad helped him clearly identify the shortcomings of local agricultural development.