She made this remark Tuesday at the National Agro-technology Conference, adding that China has basically ended the shortage in its supply of agricultural products, which also calls for the changes of policies to develop agro-technologies.

With China's coming entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), the agriculture industry is feeling increasing challenges from the international market, Zhu said, "Technologies are the key to improve the competitiveness."

More efforts will be directed into the research and application of technologies to process agricultural products and protect the rural environment rather than simply focus on increasing the output.

Technologies to improve the quality of agricultural products and produce new strains will also be badly needed to stimulate the domestic market so that farmers will earn more money, she said.

However, food security is still a major problem the country faces and will face at least in the next 30 years, as the population may top 1.6 billion in 2030 with arable land and water resources down about one-fourth.

Chinese scientists in this field will dwell on producing new strains of grain with high output, low cost and high quality so that the country will feed each person with 400-kilograms of grain and even more, Zhu noted.